Charles River Roofing

Roofing contractors around Greater Boston

The housing stock here runs old, and old roofs sit on boards laid with gaps rather than on solid sheets. That one fact shapes a quote more than whatever goes on top.

Two quotes, and the thing neither of them says

Around here the honest answer to what is under the covering is usually that nobody will know until it is off. Older houses were sheathed with boards laid with gaps between them rather than solid sheets, and a crew that opens one up may find the whole slope needs decking before anything else can happen. You want that possibility priced before the tear-off, not discovered during it.

  • Is the flashing new, or the old flashing cleaned up and sealed back down?
  • If the slope needs sheathing, what does it cost per sheet?

Then there are the rear stacks. Porches piled two and three high, each with its own small roof running back into the wall of the house, and every one of those junctions is somewhere water can get a start. They almost never appear on a quote as their own line, which is the reason to ask whether they are in the number at all.

Nothing up here drains by accident. On a three-decker every drop is routed by something a person built. Six of them, numbered. Five are places where the roof meets something else.
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.

The work

Why roofs fail in this region

Most of what fails here fails at an edge or a junction. The membrane on a flat three-decker roof gives out where it is told to leave — at the scupper, at the parapet. The pitched roofs next door lose their eaves to ice every February. Salt finds the flashing years before it finds the shingle, and the boards under a roof of this age were spaced for slate. Six causes, and the covering itself is rarely one of them.

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