Keep Above
Repair or replace the roof
A leaking roof can often be patched, and sometimes the question is whether patching still adds up against reroofing. This page counts the repair — its cost and the extra years you'd expect it to hold — against a full replacement over the decades it would last, each on its own span, to a cost per year. No winner is declared; every year figure is your estimate, not the page's.
Your estimate, not the page's
Not counted while this is $0
Your estimate, not the page's
Not counted while this is $0
Comes off the replacement
Put in what the fix would cost and what a replacement would cost. Nothing here is read from your accounts, and nothing is saved.
| Repairing | Replacing | |
|---|---|---|
| Up front | — | — |
| Running costs over its life | — | — |
| Total over its life | — | — |
| How long that covers | — | — |
| Cost a year | — | — |
| Cost a month | — | — |
This is one of the tools built into Keep Above
Keep Above is a budgeting app where you enter your bills and income and it works out the balance you need to keep — so you can see what's safe to spend. No bank connection, no ads on your data.
About this calculator
What counts as the repair cost for a roof?
The whole of the quote for this round of work — access, materials and labour, whether it's a patch, a partial reroof or flashing work. The cost per year spreads that full amount over the extra years you think the repair would hold, so the complete figure is the one that fits.
What goes into running costs a year here?
Ongoing maintenance that one side would need and the other wouldn't — regular inspections, or gutter and moss work tied to the old roof's condition — is what the running-costs boxes are for. Where both sides would cost much the same to keep up, $0 in both keeps the comparison to the up-front figures.
What is the matching time?
The number of years the repair would have to carry the roof for its cost per year to match the replacement's — a position in the arithmetic, nothing more. When running the old one already costs more each year than the whole replacement does all-up, no length of time would match, and the page says so.
What about the trade-in box?
A roof has nothing to trade in or sell, so this box — shared with the other versions of this calculator — simply stays at $0 and does nothing. If a reroof would include a scrap value for old metal sheeting, that amount can go here and comes off the replacement's cost.