Roofing contractors in Watertown, Massachusetts
Watertown sits directly on the Charles, and its housing is a compressed history of the river’s industrial years: worker two-families, later Colonial Revivals, and a growing number of flat-roofed additions behind both.
What Watertown roofs are dealing with
The town built up around the arsenal and the mills along the river, which left a dense core of two-family wood frame from the 1900s to the 1930s with shallow pitches and complicated rear rooflines.
Newer money has added dormers, extensions and flat-roofed rear additions to a great many of them, and those additions are usually where the trouble starts: a nearly flat surface tied into a pitched main roof, often re-covered in the same shingle as the front, which is the wrong material for the slope. Any quote here should price the addition separately from the main roof, in its own material.
A dense core of two-family wood frame from the 1900s to the 1930s, shallow pitches, complicated rear rooflines. Newer money has added dormers, extensions and flat-roofed rear additions to a great many of them. Those additions are the local weak point: a nearly flat surface tied into a pitched main roof, frequently re-covered in the same shingle as the front, which is the wrong material for that slope.
The age of the shingle and the age of the roof are two different numbers. The roof age check separates them.
Covering East Watertown, Coolidge Square, Bemis, Morse, Watertown Square and the rest of Watertown.
- 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 Watertown
Watertown works on the Charles valley calendar, roughly April into November, with the usual spring and early autumn rush. The town has enough contractors working in it that mid-season availability is better than in the outlying towns, but the crews who do low-slope work on rear additions are a smaller pool than the ones who do shingle, and they are the ones many Watertown houses actually need.
What moves the price in Watertown
Ask for the addition to be priced separately, in its own material. That single line explains more Watertown disputes than anything else, because a bidder who quotes the whole house in shingle is either not planning to do the addition properly or has not walked it. After that, the usual: layers, decking per sheet, and new flashing where the addition meets the main roof.
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 Watertown
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.