Watchung Roofing

Why roofs fail

Ask anyone who repairs roofs where they leak and the answer is the same: not in the middle, but wherever the roof meets something else.

A roof here rarely gives out in the field. It gives out where the water is told to leave. Six places a roof gives way. Five of them are transitions.
Garage Point 1 — ridge caps 1 Ridge caps — thin, exposed, first to lift Point 2 — the field of the roof 2 The field — shingle, one layer or two Point 3 — valleys 3 Leaf load mats where two slopes drain as one Point 4 — flashing 4 Flashing — old masonry, and the wall an attached house shares Point 5 — vent boot 5 Vent boot Point 6 — eaves and ice dams 6 Eaves — where the porch roof meets the wall

The six

What this region does to a roof

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. Most of what ends a roof here traces back to one of those.

Roofing across north and central New Jersey →