Roofing

What Kills Roofs Here

Roofs here do not die of old age. Hail, heat cycling, straight line wind and bad attic ventilation kill them.

• Hail. The Metroplex takes damaging hail most years and it does not take a record storm to fracture shingle sealant.
• Heat cycling. A dark deck in August runs far hotter than ambient then drops overnight, which works fasteners loose and dries out every rubber component up there.
• Straight line wind. Spring squall lines crease shingles without removing them. A creased shingle looks fine from the ground and has already lost its seal.
• Attic ventilation. Under-ventilated attics cook shingles from underneath. It is the most common thing we find that nobody has told the homeowner about.

Repair or Replace

If the failure is a detail, repair it. A cracked pipe boot, lifted ridge cap or failed wall flashing is a detail and most of what we see is repairs. When the shingle mat has gone brittle across the whole roof, working on it breaks the shingles next to the repair, and you have bought the next leak instead of fixing this one.

Materials

Permits Are A City By City Question

A full reroof needs a permit and an inspection in a lot of Metroplex cities, and the rules are not written in one place. Dallas, Fort Worth, Arlington, Plano, Frisco, Irving and the smaller suburbs each run their own building department with their own forms, fees and inspector schedules. Some want the permit card posted at the property. Some inspect decking before the felt goes down. Some only look at the finished roof.

We pull the permit in the city your address sits in, and address is the operative word, because parts of the Metroplex have mailing addresses that do not match the city with jurisdiction. That trips up crews working outside their home turf. An unpermitted reroof can surface later during a sale, and it is the seller who deals with it. We would rather spend the day at the counter than hand you that.