Watchung Roofing

Roofing contractors in north and central New Jersey

Split levels, knee-wall attics, and a fair number of roofs carrying a layer nobody has looked under in years. The shingle is the least interesting line on the estimate.

Ask how many layers

Plenty of houses around here are carrying a second layer of shingle that went on instead of a tear-off, years ago. It matters to the price twice over: it doubles what has to come off, and it means nobody has actually seen the deck in a very long time. If a quote does not say how many layers it assumes, the number is provisional whether it admits that or not.

Split-level rooflines are the other local wrinkle. Where a lower roof runs into an upper wall there is a flashing detail that has to be cut in properly, and on a house with two or three of those junctions it is a real share of the labor. Worth asking whether each one is being redone or worked around.

Beyond that, the ordinary things. A stated price per sheet for decking. A count. And a name attached to the workmanship, not only to the shingle.

The trouble is usually one layer down. On these houses the roof you can see is often not the only one. Six of them, numbered. Five are places where the roof meets something else.
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 work

Why roofs fail in this region

A winter that crosses the freezing point dozens of times rather than settling below it. Post-war Capes and split-levels with rooms built into the attic, so there is no ordinary space left to ventilate. A second layer of shingles that the state tolerated for years and a great many houses accepted. Skylights and dormers added in the 1980s and 1990s, each one a hole surrounded by flashing. And a roof edge that takes every drop of water the roof sheds. Most of what gets reported here traces back to one of those.

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