Let’s Talk Flashings: The Small Metal Pieces That Protect Your Whole House

Tim Kelley

Oct 24

3 min read

When people picture a home inspection, they think of big-ticket items like the roof, the furnace and the foundation. But some of the most important parts of a house are thin strips of metal most homeowners never notice. They’re called flashings, and when they’re missing or installed incorrectly, they can quietly cause expensive problems.

What Is Flashing, and What Does It Do?

Flashing is thin material, usually metal, that directs water away from the places where a house is most vulnerable. A roof, wall, chimney or window is only as watertight as the joints between its parts, and flashing seals and protects those joints.

Water doesn’t need much of an opening. It follows gravity, wind and surface tension into any gap, and then it keeps going. Flashing gives it a path out.

Common places you’ll find flashing:

Roof-to-wall intersections (step flashing)
Chimneys and skylights
Roof valleys
Plumbing vent pipes (the boot or collar around them)
Roof edges (drip edge)
Above windows and doors
Where decks attach to the house (ledger flashing)

The Piece That Gets Missed: Kickout Flashing

One piece deserves special attention: the kickout flashing, also called a diverter.

Wherever a sloped roof ends against a vertical wall, rainwater runs down the roof, along the wall, and reaches the bottom corner. A kickout is an angled piece of metal at that corner. It “kicks” the water out and into the gutter instead of letting it run down the face of the wall or slip behind the siding.

Without it, that water can:

Run behind siding, brick or trim
Soak the sheathing and framing
Lead to rot, peeling paint, stained siding, and mold
Stay hidden for years before anything shows up inside

A small, inexpensive part protects a large area of the house.

Why Are Kickouts Missing or Wrong on New Builds?

You’d expect a new home to have every flashing detail in place. In practice, kickouts are among the most commonly missed items, and there are some understandable reasons:

Many trades touch the same corner. The roofer, the siding crew, the gutter installer and sometimes a mason each handle part of that area. A small piece like a kickout can fall between their scopes of work, and each trade may assume another one installed it.
Sequence matters. The kickout needs to go in at the right stage, after roofing starts and before the siding and gutters close it in. If the timing is missed, it’s hard to add later.
It’s easy to overlook. It’s small and low on the list of things anyone checks during a busy build.
It’s often installed incorrectly. When a kickout is there, we sometimes see ones that are too short, set at the wrong angle, not sealed at the wall, or partly blocked by the gutter. A kickout that doesn’t actually discharge into the gutter isn’t doing its job.
The damage is slow. Because water problems take time to appear, a missing kickout can go unnoticed through a final walkthrough and show up months or years later.

What Homeowners Can Look For

You don’t have to climb a ladder to spot early warning signs. Check the corners where roof lines meet walls, especially above gutters:

Stained or streaked siding or brick below the roof edge
Peeling paint or soft, damaged trim at the corner
Water overflowing at the corner of the gutter during rain
Dark spots or stains on interior walls near these corners

If you see any of these, have a professional take a look.

Why It Matters for New Construction

New homes get inspected by the building department, but those inspections check code minimums at set stages, and small details can still be missed. That’s why an independent inspection is valuable, even for a house nobody has lived in yet.

New construction phase inspections can catch details like missing flashings while they’re still easy and inexpensive to fix.
A final inspection before closing gives you a documented list to take to your builder.
An 11-month warranty inspection is your chance to find issues before your builder’s one-year warranty ends. Most builders want them documented in writing, and a photo-filled report makes that easy.

The Bottom Line

Flashings aren’t glamorous, but they’re one of the most important defenses a house has against water. Whether your home is brand new or decades old, it’s worth knowing they’re there and doing their job.

Have questions about flashing or any other part of your home? Tim is happy to explain what he finds and what it means for your home.