Roofing contractors in Malden, Massachusetts
Malden is three-decker country at its densest: street after street of three-family houses whose roofs are nearly flat, covered in membrane, and nothing like the shingle roof most quotes assume.
What Malden roofs are dealing with
The city filled in between 1890 and 1930 with the building type that defines this part of Greater Boston: three stacked apartments in a wood-frame house, a shallow or flat main roof, and a rear porch stack running the full height.
Replacing that roof is a different job from replacing a suburban shingle roof: the covering is a membrane, the drainage runs to internal or edge scuppers rather than a simple eave, and the parapet and porch-roof junctions are where the water actually gets in. Owners are frequently surprised that a three-decker roof needs a crew that works low-slope, not the one that reshingled the Cape next door.
Three-family houses from 1890 to 1930, block after block, with shallow or flat main roofs and a rear porch stack running the full height. The porch stack is its own roof, usually smaller and often older than the main one, and it is left out of a surprising number of quotes. Where the streets open up toward Faulkner and Bellrock, the stock turns to single and two-family with conventional pitches.
The age of the shingle and the age of the roof are two different numbers. The roof age check separates them.
Covering Edgeworth, Maplewood, Linden, Faulkner, Bellrock and the rest of Malden.
- 1 Ridge caps. The thinnest pieces up there, and the first to work loose over a hard winter.
- 2 The field. Slate on the older stock, shingle on the rest. They age on very different clocks.
- 3 Valleys. Leaf litter mats in them, and two slopes then drain through one line.
- 4 Flashing. Old masonry chimneys, and the porch roof that meets the wall three stories up.
- 5 The vent boot. Rubber that hardens and splits well ahead of the covering it sits in.
- 6 Eaves and ice dams. Where meltwater refreezes at the cold edge and backs up under the courses.
When the work happens in Malden
Malden runs on the inland calendar, April through early November, and the three-decker roofs add their own constraint: membrane work has a minimum application temperature, so the shoulder weeks that still suit shingle do not suit a flat roof. That narrows the window further on exactly the housing type this city is made of, and it is why flat-roof crews book earlier than shingle crews here.
What moves the price in Malden
The first question is not price, it is material: a flat or shallow roof needs a membrane and the crew that installs membranes, not the one that reshingled the house on the corner. After that, the lines that move the number are the drainage, scuppers, internal drains, parapet detail, and whether the rear porch roof is included. A quote that prices only the main roof has priced part of the house.
Three things decide the price on a house this old, and none of them is the product on top. Hold two estimates against the comparison checklist and the gaps show themselves:
- Is the sheathing solid, or boards with gaps, and what is the rate if the whole slope has to be covered?
- Are the parapets and scuppers part of this job?
- Flashing: new metal, or the old metal sealed?
The work
Before you call anyone in Malden
Three questions arrive with nearly every call in this city, and the answer is the same in Lynn as in Quincy. They sit in the guides:
Why roofs fail here
Half of what goes wrong around the river is about water leaving rather than water arriving. Six of them, a page each.