Charles River Roofing

Roofing across Greater Boston

A free connecting service linking homeowners with local roofing providers across Greater Boston. What follows is what a New England winter asks of a roof, and the questions worth asking before anyone starts work.

Nothing up here drains by accident. On a three-decker every drop is routed by something a person built. 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 Ridge caps: thin, exposed, first to lift Point 2: the field of the roof 2 The field, slate or shingle, aging Point 3: valleys 3 Valleys: litter, then one drain Point 4: flashing 4 Flashing: chimney, porch wall Point 5: vent boot 5 Vent boot Point 6: eaves and ice dams 6 Eaves, where the porch roof meets the wall
  1. 1 Ridge caps. The thinnest pieces up there, and the first to work loose over a hard winter.
  2. 2 The field. Slate on the older stock, shingle on the rest. They age on very different clocks.
  3. 3 Valleys. Leaf litter mats in them, and two slopes then drain through one line.
  4. 4 Flashing. Old masonry chimneys, and the porch roof that meets the wall three stories up.
  5. 5 The vent boot. Rubber that hardens and splits well ahead of the covering it sits in.
  6. 6 Eaves and ice dams. Where meltwater refreezes at the cold edge and backs up under the courses.

Very little of this is a simple slope

Flat roofs over three-deckers, parapets that drain sideways through a scupper, porch stacks meeting the wall three stories up. Every one of those is a joint, and joints are where roofs give up.

The work

Twelve towns, two river banks

Twelve cities across the crown, from the mill blocks of the Merrimack valley to the three-decker streets of Malden and Brockton and the salt air of Revere and Lynn, all of them working through housing built between 1880 and 1930.