Add-on page. Pages like this one are not part of the Designed build. They are $150 each, one time, for the questions you already answer on the phone every week. See what that covers.
Is my roof due?
If your roof went on somewhere between fifteen and twenty years ago, it is a fair question, and the answer is not automatically yes. Here is what we look at and what a new roof genuinely changes.
What that age usually means here
An architectural asphalt roof is often sold on a thirty year figure. In northern New England, with freeze and thaw cycling, ice at the eaves and heavy snow, twenty to twenty-five years is a more realistic working life. Three-tab shingles are shorter again.
So a fifteen year old roof is usually mid-life rather than finished, and a twenty year old roof is worth having somebody actually look at rather than guessing from the ground.
Signs that it is time
- Granules collecting in the gutters, or bald patches where the mat shows through
- Shingles curling at the corners or lifting along an edge
- Cracking across the face of shingles on the sun-facing slopes
- Any sag in the deck line when you sight along the ridge
- Staining on attic sheathing, or daylight visible at the eaves
- Repairs in more than one place in the last couple of years
One of these on its own is often a repair. Three or four together is a roof telling you something.
What a new roof actually changes
The shingles are the visible part and the least interesting one. What a replacement really buys you is everything underneath: ice and water membrane at the eaves and valleys that older roofs frequently do not have, sheathing repaired where it has gone soft, and ventilation corrected.
That combination is what stops the water damage, not the colour on top. What a replacement includes.
What waiting costs
Waiting a year on a roof with life left in it costs nothing, and we will tell you when that is the case. Waiting on a roof that is done gets expensive in a specific order: sheathing first, then insulation, then ceilings and interior finishes.
Replacing sheathing during a tear-off is a modest line item. Replacing it after two winters of getting wet, along with the ceiling below, is a different job entirely. The roof is rarely the expensive part of a roof problem.
The cheapest useful thing you can do
Have somebody get on it and write down what they see, with photographs and an estimate of remaining life. Then you are deciding with information instead of a hunch, and if the answer is three more winters you can budget for it properly. That is what an inspection is, and it is free alongside an estimate.
Not sure where yours sits?
Send a photo from the ground and roughly when it went on. Often that is enough for a useful first answer, and it costs nothing to ask.