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School me on roofing
We probably need a new roof soon. Several contractors have said it's on its last leg, and the inspector said it had about 4 years left when we moved in 5 years ago. I'm having a roofing guy come over for an estimate after the holidays. I know zero about roofing. So here's the deal:
-950 square feet (so we can go a little pricier because we don't have much to do)
-1906 bungalow with hipped roof and one dormer; not a lot of vents or utilities up there, but we want to add some vents to allow for a whole house fan
-I have $14K saved for home repairs, but if we don't have to spend that, I don't want to because I have other projects I'd rather do
-We currently have asbestos singles and a green exterior, but someday we might like to rip those off because we have original redwood teardrop siding underneath, so I want something that would look OK with either
-I'm not insisting on a fully period-appropriate, but I don't want it to look ridiculously out of place for a 1906 house (but I have no idea yet what period-appropriate would be). Imitation materials would be fine with me if they are EF and durable. We also have to get it past the historic preservation committee so it can't be too far out there.
-We don't really have hail or roof-damaging winds. The only natural disaster dangers I can think of are earthquakes and fires. We're not covered for earthquakes, so the cost of repairing that would be on us, not the insurer.
-We have redwood gutters, which I absolutely do not want to damage or replace
-Most important, in order, for me are (1) looks (2) durability (3) environmentally sound (ties in with durability, so the longer lasting the better in my mind, to prevent a short rip-out-and-replace cycle) (4) price. For DH price is first on everything, always, so it can't be too outrageous so that I can talk him into it.
Here's the house:
So I guess my questions are:
(1) What are my material choices and the pros and cons on materials (price, environmental impact, appearance)?
(2) Are there factors I should consider beyond the ones I've listed?
(3) What should I ask the contractor(s)? How many bids should I get?
(4) What's just a general price range I can expect for a new roof on a 950 sf home? Like $6,000 for an average roof to $15,000 for a nice one? Less? More?
Re: School me on roofing
Hi Juno!
I will see your long detailed post and raise you an even longer one. Buckle up...
OK not sure I can answer all of your questions but I know a bit about roofing with asphalt shingles. We had the seller replace our roof before we bought the house because she wasn't willing to give us a credit for all the issues we found during inspection. And then we DIYed the shed roof which was 900 sf but a very easy layout with only one peak and no valleys. We've also done a bunch of patching like when we took down the chimney earlier this year. My FIL helped and/or advised as has roofed many a house.
I pulled up the re-roofing requirements I gave the contractors who did the roof and here is a summary:
GAF/Elk 40 yr architectural shingles in Antique Slate
30# felt paper
Original shingles removed
Smaller side roof vents removed and ridge vent installed along the whole ridge.
Ice and water shield (aka leak barrier) installed at least 4 feet above where the exterior walls start (the overhang also has this barrier but should not be included in the dimension...if your overhang is consistently the same size just give them the overall feet you want so they aren't confused).
Leak barrier installed around any penetrations including but not limited too the chimney, the kitchen vent, the bathroom vents, and any patched holes.
Leak barrier should be approved to withstand the regions conditions.
The contractor is to install the shingles in a manner that does not void the warranty or they will be held liable.
Per the manufacturer's requirements if the roof is considered low slope (2-4" per foot) two piles of underlayment should be used with an overlap of at least 19".
We will buy an extra bundle for future repairs/patching (we also bought the shed shingles at that time too so we didn't have to pay a delivery fee.)
If any signs of rot or water damage are found in the plywood sheathing replace it. We will pay the difference.
Architectural shingles last longer (every portion has two layers unlike 3-tab) and look better if you go with asphalt that sounds like a must for you.
#1 must for me...no questions ifs, ands, or buts...the old shingles must be removed. Not doing so might save on a little cost and keep from needing a bigger dumpster but the life of your new shingles will be seriously decreased. The key to getting the most out of shingles is that everything must be perfectly flat and going over old roofs makes that impossible. Every staple, nail, shingle, and piece of felt paper needs to be removed.
You never get the full year warranty they say. 40 yr shingles will only last 30 years or a little more if you're lucky.
#2 most important is the plywood (well I'm not sure what your sheathing is made of it depends on what the previous owners did) replacement. Unless it has a very bad leak that has rotted all the way through (in which case you could see it in the attic) you can't tell what state the sheathing is in until you have the old roof off. It is easy to patch it at that time and insure your new roof will last as long as possible but if you don't say you'll pay extra for it they may just re-roof right over it. A sheet or two of plywood and an hour of labor are well worth the cost to fix any questionable areas.
Ice and water shield are not only for people who live in bad environments. It's good to have at least one row of it. It's a second layer of protection in the area that is most likely to leak and it only costs $30-40 a roll so it's not a huge expense for the extra insurance it gives you. If roofers in your area don't use it they might fight you on that one though.
I can't exactly tell the layout of your roof but in general ridge vents are the most effieicent and effective way to ventilate your roof. Side vents are often undersized or not enough are put in plus they only pull air in from your eaves in those areas not uniformly across the whole roof. What kind of venting do you have in your sofit/eaves? Hopefully that is pretty uniform as well. Switching to a ridge vent is easy and cheap. There may be a few areas that still need a side vent like your dormer which is fine. The contractors should be able to give you a direction on that.
Go through with them and talk about what kind of materials they will be using on the flashing. That is where you are most likely to have leaks. Here is a good pdf showing what should be done. I'm sure there are others online but this was the first to come up. : )
They may need to take extra precautions to protect your gutters. Is there anyway they could take them down on one side if that is where they are going to be going up and down?
Never re-roof in the winter. Wait until the temperatures are decent in the spring or summer. Roofers will argue with me on that because they want business all year round but winter roofing jobs are significantly more likely to leak and often void warranties. The line of tar under each shingle needs to seal to the single below it shortly after they are installed in order for them to work. Plus there is a lot of caulking/tar/rubber that is used around flashing, ridges, and valleys all of those products have minimum temperature ranges too. If the weather is too cold none of this will cure correctly. Some will say the sun can melt those tar lines on the back of shingles but I will argue that not every side of your roof will get the same amount of sun and only part of your roof will be sealed. There is no way to know that it has all sealed so don't take the gamble with that much money on the line.
Mention to the contractors that you don't want to see any smeared footprints on the shingles too. Good roofers know not to be on the roof in the middle of the day in the summer when walking on the roof creates smear marks on the shingles so it shouldn't be a problem. But my aunt and uncle just had a new roof put on because of hail damage (so they had to use the company the insurance company would work with) and they ended up with visible marks all over the roof. You could even see them from the street!
Metal roofs are also something to consider. They can last much longer and many consider them more green but they cost a lot and have a much different look that I'm not sure would be appropriate on a bungalow. Honestly I would pick a good shingle that will last a long time and pick a contractor that is willing to recycle the singles (they can do that now but it costs more).
We're planning to have a light green house someday too so we went with a medium gray with a green accent (see the link above for pictures). We didn't want too light of a roof because of the stains the tree debris leaves on the roof (see the before pictures!) and I picked the shingles I did particularly because they have a coating that is supposed to help keep those dark streaks from happening. You can see a large portion of our roof from the front so that was important to me. I think it is much more common now than when we had our roof done. Lighter roofs will save you on cooling costs if your top floor gets really hot in the summer but they probably aren't period appropriate. So a light to medium gray would work well.
Overall I love our new roof! We have went up to check on it every year and so far it's hold up much, much better than the previous one. The additional attic insulation is also helping because so far we have no ice damming unlike before.
HTH and have a happy holidays!
Thanks for all the info! I know, it's long. I can't seem to post without writing a book, so I don't create a lot of posts. We don't really have "winter" and "summer." Just "rainy" and "dry." The temps never vary much (the lows get a bit lower during rainy season), so I'm not sure how much the time of year matters. It gets above 65-70 only during a couple of weeks in late Sept./early October.
Our soffit vents are these crazy 1.5" inch holes drilled randomly but pretty uniformly around the house. Our contractor said it looked like some guy got drunk and just started drilling. DH got worried about bees and mice, so he put steel wool in all the holes
. I'm not sure how much air is actually getting in them now. I'll have the guy look at those and see what he recommends.
Thanks for the tips on removing the old shingles. I think ours have a few layers already, so it wasn't going to be a choice for us, but we might have tried it if the contractor said we could. We'll avoid it.
Now I'm really worried for my gutters
I'm not sure if they can come down or not. But I'll see what we can work out with the contractors.
Aw thanks bleubook. We don't really do sticky posts here but I should probably copy and paste that into a Word document to save for later. I typed up something similar one other time but it was long enough ago it wasn't coming up in my previous posts.
Juno - Don't worry I love your long posts.
Wow that is a very mild climate! OK well never mind then I think most of those sealant materials require 40 or warmer. My co-irker is having his roof replaced in January against my advice and even though we're having a mild winter so far there is no way it will be that warm. We'll see long it is before he's complaining of leaks. I wish I could find that Holmes on Homes episode when the Chicago home owner had his roof replaced in the middle of winter. The amount of leaks they found was astonishing!
1.5" holes are big. I might consider putting a coated, fine wire mesh over the holes instead of steel wool. Because I'm not sure how much air can get through steel wool. Epoxy coating will keep the wire from rusting and a thicker gauge wire will be too much for a mouse to easily chew through. I'm not sure about bees though. See what the contractor has to say.
Well are the gutters fragile or not? I assumed they were compared to metal gutters. I just know how much mess roofers can make when they are doing the tear off and that there will be a lot of trips up and down ladders with heavy tools supplies (and most likely a pallet of shingles dropped off on the roof from a truck with a mini crane) so wouldn't want the gutters to get damaged from the ladder resting against them. If you stress to the roofers how important it is to keep the gutters safe I'm sure they should have some work arounds since other homes in the area probably have the same style. They can use ladder braces that make it so the ladder is resting on the house or the roof itself not the gutters. Or they can build some temporary framing to keep them safe. I just know sometimes people have small dents in their metal gutters after having their roofs done.
That's putting it "mildly" haha. I call it "boring," "monotonous" and "downright un-American" (as I sit in 70-degree weather in GA with the windows on the house open).
I think the gutters must be more fragile than metal. I'll be sure to make them include some protection measures in the contract.
Thanks! I had seen those rubber tiles, but I wasn't sure if there were any downsides, especially environmental. They do look nice in pictures. I posted over on Green Living to see if anyone has any info on rubber vs. asphalt.
I can't really advise about materials or considerations for your climate, but I can share that we had our roof completely replaced (plywood and all) a couple months ago, and the estimate was ~11,000 for ~900 sq. ft. It ended up being a little more than that because once the old plywood was off, they discovered that a couple of the rafters were severely warped and needed to be replaced. And I didn't really shop around or do too much research about it in advance because I already had a roofer I'd worked with before, and I trusted his recommendations.
Here's my post from when I was asking about it - including many tips from FoxinFiji! http://community.thenest.com/cs/ks/forums/thread/58994851.aspx
Hi juno and all,
I realize that this post was made quite some time ago, but if anyone's referencing it, I thought I'd leave a suggestion or two. There are a lot of articles that give a rundown of roofing materials and prices and such, but when I was looking up the information, I found this one from Bob Vila the most helpful: How to Choose a New Roof
Also, there are several tools that let you pick out your siding color and roofing colors to try to choose what looks the best. I liked this one from Quarrix Building Products to be the best: Interactive Roof Designer
I'm pretty big into being as green as possible too, so I'd consider how sustainable your roof choices are too :]
Hope this helps!
Joli