Watchung Roofing

Roofing across north and central New Jersey

A free connecting service linking homeowners with local roofing providers across north and central New Jersey. What follows is where these roofs actually give out, and what to ask before you sign.

The trouble is usually one layer down. On these houses the roof you can see is often not the only one. Six places a roof gives way. The one everyone checks is No. 2, the shingle field. The other five do most of the failing.
Garage Point 1: ridge caps 1 Point 2: the field of the roof 2 Point 3: valleys 3 Point 4: flashing 4 Point 5: vent boot 5 Point 6: eaves and ice dams 6
  1. 1 Ridge caps. Thin, exposed, and the first course to lift.
  2. 2 The field. The course you can see, over the underlayment you cannot.
  3. 3 Valleys. Leaf load mats where two slopes drain as one.
  4. 4 Flashing. Old masonry, and the wall an attached house shares.
  5. 5 Vent boots. The rubber cracks years before the shingles around it are done.
  6. 6 Eaves and ice dams. Where the melt runs out of warm roof and turns back into ice.

The layer nobody has looked under

A great many roofs here carry a second course of shingle laid over the first, years ago, which means nobody has seen the deck since. Add a freeze that crosses the line dozens of times a winter and a knee-wall attic that cannot breathe, and the picture is set.

The work

When the work happens here

North Jersey roofing runs on a short calendar. Shingle needs warmth to seal, so the reliable window is roughly April through October, and the crews at either end of it are working against the thermometer. A roof replaced in late November may not seal until the following spring, which matters more on a low slope than a steep one.

Winter is the season that finds the weak points rather than the season you fix them in. The freeze-thaw line crosses back and forth dozens of times between December and March here, and every crossing works at a nail hole or a lifted tab. That is why so many calls come in February about a stain that first appeared in October.

The practical order, if nothing is actively leaking: look in the fall, decide over the winter, book for spring. An inspection costs a fraction of what a rushed January repair does, and it tells you whether you are buying time or buying a roof.

Ten cities, eight counties

Ten cities from the Bergen County line to the bay: the post-war ranches and split-levels that fill Paramus and Edison, the pre-war blocks of Hackensack and Westfield, the two- and three-family houses of Newark, and the flat row-house roofs of Jersey City.