Watchung Roofing

Why roofs fail

A freeze that crosses the line dozens of times a winter, and a great many roofs carrying a second layer nobody has looked under.

The trouble is usually one layer down. On these houses the roof you can see is often not the only one. On a split-level, these six arrive at different heights.
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 six

What a New Jersey freeze finds

A winter that hovers at freezing and crosses the line dozens of times, working on every seam. Capes and split-levels with finished rooms in the roof, leaving knee-wall pockets that cannot be ventilated like an attic. A second layer of shingles hiding a deck nobody has seen in forty years. Skylights and dormers whose flashing was sealed rather than layered. Roof planes that stop against a wall. And a fascia edge quietly going soft behind the gutters. A second layer hides three of those until the tear-off.

Roofing across north and central New Jersey →