5 Signs Your Ridge Capping Needs Repointing | Perth Premium Roofing
If your home was built between the 1960s and the 1980s — like most of Thornlie, Gosnells, Maddington and Kenwick — your tile roof is wearing its original ridge capping mortar. That mortar has now survived somewhere between thirty and sixty Perth summers, and it was never designed to last that long.
Ridge capping is the row of curved caps running along the top and down the hips of your roof. The pointing is the mortar seal that locks them down and keeps water out. When it fails, water gets in quietly — and the first sign most people notice is a stain on the ceiling. Here are the five signs to catch it earlier.
1. Cracked or crumbling mortar you can see from the ground
Stand on the footpath and look along your ridge line. Healthy pointing looks like a smooth, continuous seal. Failing pointing shows hairline cracks, chunks missing, or a dried-out, powdery texture — like old grout in a shower. If you can spot damage from the ground, there's always more up close.
2. Bits of mortar in your gutters or on the ground
Grey grit and mortar crumbs in the gutters, on paths or in garden beds below the roof line are pieces of your pointing letting go. Every winter storm washes a bit more out. Finding debris like this is one of the most reliable signs the seal has reached the end of its life.
3. Gaps or daylight under the ridge caps
Where pointing has fallen away completely, you'll see dark gaps under the caps — or from inside the roof space, pinpricks of daylight along the ridge line. Every gap is an open door for rain, and for the wasps and pests that love a dry roof cavity.
4. Water stains near the top of your walls or ceiling after rain
Leaks from failed ridge pointing usually show up high — stains near the centre of the ceiling under the ridge, or streaks at the top of walls under a hip line. If marks appear or darken after a good winter front rolls through, the ridge is the first place worth checking.
5. Moss growing along the ridge line
Moss needs moisture and a foothold, and cracked pointing offers both. A fuzzy green line tracing your ridge caps means water is sitting in the cracks — and every root is slowly prying them wider.
What happens if you leave it?
Nothing dramatic — at first. Water tracks in slowly, soaking insulation and timber before you ever see a stain. The bigger risk is wind: pointing is part of what holds ridge caps down, and a loose cap in a Perth storm becomes heavy airborne debris. What starts as a repointing job can turn into a ceiling repair, or worse.
The fix: repointing with flexible compound
Repointing means raking out the old, failed pointing and resealing every ridge and hip with a modern flexible compound, colour-matched to your roof. Unlike the rigid mortar it replaces, flexible pointing is made to move with the roof through Perth's hot-cold cycles instead of cracking. Most homes are done in a day.
One honest note: if your caps are loose or rocking, the bedding underneath them has failed too — and that needs more than a new seal. We'll tell you straight at the inspection if that's what we find, rather than pointing over a problem.
Worried about your ridge caps?
We'll get up safely, photograph exactly what's there, and give you a free, itemised quote — no pressure, anywhere from Thornlie to Armadale. Call 0493616136 or get your free quote online.
