Tile Roof Repair, Lift-and-Relay or Replacement

This page picks up once the roof's condition is known; it doesn't cover prices, how long underlayment lasts or how to tell it's worn, tracing a leak under tile (that's in where water gets into a tile roof), or doing tile repairs yourself. How a single cracked tile is replaced, or a slipped one reset, is in cracked or slipped roof tiles. For the same decision on any kind of roof, see roof repair or replace. And don't walk on the tile to look: it cracks under a person's weight.

The tile

Clay tile is fired clay; concrete tile is cement-based (how they differ is in clay vs concrete roof tile). Either can stay sound long after the sheet beneath it has worn out, which is what makes reuse possible. The roofer counts cracked, broken and slipped pieces, checks whether the tile is sound through its body or breaking down (crumbling edges, faces flaking off, concrete gone soft and chalky), and asks whether the profile and color can still be found.

The underlayment

The underlayment can't be judged from the ground or from how the tile looks, so the roofer lifts tiles where trouble usually starts: at walls and chimneys, in valleys, at the eaves, around vents and pipes, and above any spot where water showed inside. What matters for the scope is whether the damage has an edge (one wall, one valley, one slope) or turns up wherever a tile comes up.

The deck

The deck is the plywood, OSB or boards the tile is fastened into. CRC 2025, R905.3.1 puts clay and concrete tile over wood structural panels or solid lumber sheathing, with spaced boards allowed only in Seismic Design Categories A, B and C; ask the building department which category your address falls in. If your tile sits on spaced boards and your address is outside those categories, ask whether the relay has to add solid sheathing. The attic can show stains, rot or daylight, but the deck's real condition shows only with the tile and old underlayment off, so ask how the quote treats bad wood found at that point.

Between a section relay and a full one, the tiles lifted away from the problem area decide: sound underlayment there makes a section relay a complete fix, while the same wear everywhere means relaying section by section keeps bringing the crew back.

1. Tile sourced first. Replacement tile and the special shapes (hip and ridge caps, rake pieces, eave closures) are found and matched before anything comes off.
2. Tile off. Caps first, then the field tile course by course. Sound pieces are stacked; cracked ones are set aside. Some tile breaks at this stage no matter how careful the crew is.
3. Strip to the deck. The old underlayment, the battens the tile hung on (strips fastened across the slope) and the old fasteners come off.
4. Deck repaired. Soft, delaminated or rotten sheathing is cut out and replaced. This is where the deck stops being a guess.
5. New underlayment. Tile needs a slope of at least 2½:12, and from 2½:12 to 4:12 a double layer of underlayment (CRC 2025, R905.3.2). In a fire zone, what goes down here may hinge on the building department's answer described below.
6. New metal and openings. Valley metal, flashings at walls, chimneys and pipes (on tile, often metal pans that sit under the tile), vents, and eave closures or bird stops. Flashings, edgings and vents that are rusted, damaged or deteriorated must be replaced (R908.5), and with the roof open, it's the easiest time to renew the rest.
7. Battens and fasteners to current rules (R908.1). That means corrosion-resistant nails at least 11-gage with a 5/16-inch head, reaching at least 3/4 inch into the deck or through it, and tile wire at least 0.083 inch where wire is used (R905.3.7).
8. Solar mounts, if panels are planned. They're flashed in on the new underlayment before the tile goes back.
9. Tile reset. The same tile goes back in its original pattern, replacement pieces fill the gaps, and the caps go on last.

Steps 3 to 7 disappear under the tile, so ask for photos of the bare deck and the new underlayment before the tile goes back on.

• Current production. If the profile and color are still made, this is the simplest source. New clay tile must meet ASTM C1167 and new concrete tile ASTM C1492 (CRC 2025, R905.3.4 and R905.3.5).
• Salvage. Older profiles and colors get discontinued. Tile yards keep used tile from torn-off roofs, and weathered salvage often sits better beside weathered tile than anything new.
• Your own roof. Good tile from a garage, a patio cover or a back slope can move to the street side, with new or salvaged pieces going where they're least seen.

Match from tile in hand, not a brochure: new tile under the same color name can look different beside tile that has weathered for years, so hold a sample next to the old tile before ordering. Order caps, rake pieces and closures with the field tile; those shapes are often the hardest to find. Afterward, keep a few spare tiles at the house for the next cracked piece. What's particular to S-tile and two-piece barrel roofs, from the maker's mark on the back to which pieces break first, is in Spanish S-tile and barrel roofs.

• Nothing goes over tile. R908.4 rules out a recover, a new covering laid over the old one, on slate, clay, cement or asbestos-cement tile. So a tile roof is repaired, relaid or torn off.
• Sound tile may go back. R908.5 permits reinstalling existing slate, clay or cement tile, with one exclusion: pieces that are damaged, cracked or broken.
• Worn metal may not. The same section requires flashings, edgings, outlets, vents and similar parts of the assembly to be replaced when they're rusted, damaged or deteriorated. If a quote reuses all the old metal, ask how each piece was judged.
• Relaid tile goes on to current rules. Under R908.1, a re-roof's materials and methods follow the current roofing rules: the solid deck (R905.3.1), the slope and double-underlayment rules (R905.3.2) and the fastener sizes above (R905.3.7). How the roof was nailed decades ago doesn't set the bar. Tile reinstallation sits in the code's re-roofing section, so ask for these rules on a section relay too. Below 2½:12, tile can't go back on.

• a 72-lb mineral-surfaced cap sheet or a listed Class A underlayment over the deck;
• bird stops closing the ends of the tile at the eaves, where the profile allows;
• hip and ridge caps set in mortar.

A covering put on as a repair in these zones must rate at least Class A (507.1). More on the fire rules: fire class and hazard zones. The Title 24 cool-roof requirement has its own re-roof trigger, by climate zone; the cool-roof requirement on a re-roof explains it.

Whether relaying the same tile counts as replacing the covering, under either rule, is a question to put to the building department for your address before the job is priced. The answer can change what goes under the tile, whether bird stops and mortared caps are required, and whether the cool-roof requirement or one of its alternatives applies. If a relay does count, the fire-zone 12-month window matters too: two section relays inside it can add up to half the roof.

If solar is planned, the relay is the time to set the mounts: each one flashed into the new underlayment and the tile reset around it, rather than worked in later through finished tile that cracks underfoot. See solar on clay and concrete tile and our review of tile-roof solar jobs in Santa Clarita. Panels already on the roof come off before the tile and go back after; removing and reinstalling solar covers the order.

Burbank, 2023: one section, same tile. Concrete tile on a wood deck and a leak; the work covered about 300 square feet. We scoped the work to the underlayment and flashings, not the tile. In that area we took the tile up and stacked it, stripped the failed underlayment and replaced damaged sheathing where we found it. A self-adhered high-temperature membrane went down; at the wall, the junction was rebuilt with a torch-applied membrane run under the Z-bar flashing. New tile pan flashings and two low-profile vents went in, and the original tile was reset in its original pattern, with spares kept for pieces that broke in handling. Inspected August 31, finished September 27, 2023.

Canoga Park, 2026: the whole roof, priced both ways. A roof of flat concrete tile, 26 squares (a square is 100 square feet of roof). We quoted a new roof and a reset of the existing tile side by side, so the owner could compare the numbers before choosing. We then took the tile up course by course, laid new underlayment and reset the same tile. Replacement tile, ridge cap and rake pieces were ordered ahead of time, with the color matched from physical samples, not a brochure. The job ran on an LADBS roofing permit for the 26 squares.

We work under California contractor license CSLB #1032379, C-39 Roofing. More finished jobs are in our case studies, and our roofing services are on our roofing page.

Code sections, rules and figures on this page come from the primary sources below. Codes, local requirements and product terms change; each was verified October 7, 2026.

1. California Residential Code 2025, Chapter 9 Roof Assemblies, R905.3 and R908 (UpCodes)
2. California Wildland-Urban Interface Code 2025, Chapter 5, 504.2 and 507.1 (UpCodes)
3. California Solar Permitting Guidebook, 4th Edition