Services
Shingle roofing
Tear-off and replacement, wind and storm damage, with the material options explained before anything is signed.
The wear
Granules are the shingle's sunscreen
Granules are the crushed mineral surface on an asphalt shingle. They block ultraviolet light and give the shingle its fire resistance, and Arizona sun takes them off faster than most of the country.
A modest amount of granules in the gutters in the first few months after a new roof is normal — loose material shedding. What is worth acting on is bare patches where the black mat shows through, granules piling up in a downspout years into a roof's life, or loss concentrated below a valley, which usually means water is scouring one path.
The useful test is not whether there are granules in the gutter. It is how much mat is exposed, because once the mat is bare that spot degrades quickly.
Storm season
Wind damage is a pattern
Monsoon microbursts lift shingle edges, and the damage usually shows on the slope that faced the burst rather than across the whole roof. That is why a wide photograph of the slope comes before the close-ups — a pattern only reads at a distance.
A lifted shingle often seals itself back down in the next hot afternoon and looks untouched from the driveway. What the wind actually did was break the adhesive strip, and the shingle that reseals is no longer holding the way it was designed to. That damage tends to announce itself during a later storm rather than the one that caused it.
Hail happens here, but less often than homeowners expect, and a good deal of what gets called hail damage in the Valley turns out to be foot traffic, blistering, or simple age. Telling those apart is a matter of the pattern and the shape of the impact, which is a thing to photograph rather than to argue about.
The decision
Tear-off or go over the top
Laying new shingles over the existing ones is cheaper on the day and it is not free. A second layer traps heat against the first, and in this climate heat is the thing that ages a shingle — a roof that runs hotter wears faster.
It also hides the deck. A tear-off is the only time anyone sees the wood the roof is nailed to, and soft or water-damaged decking is exactly the sort of thing worth finding before a new roof goes on top of it rather than after. Add the weight of a second layer and the fact that the new shingles are following the old ones' irregularities rather than a flat plane, and the saving starts looking like a loan.
There are roofs where an overlay is a reasonable answer, and where it is we will tell you. It is worth knowing which conversation you are having, because the cheapest bid on a re-roof is quite often the one that is not tearing anything off.
The comparison
What to actually compare when you compare bids
Most shingle bids are compared on the shingle and the number, which is the least informative pair of facts available. A roof is a system, and the parts of it that decide how long it lasts are mostly not the shingle.
What is worth asking every contractor, including us:
- What underlayment goes down, and is it the same across the whole roof
- What happens at the valleys, and at every wall and pipe the roof meets
- What the ventilation plan is — intake and exhaust, and whether they are balanced
- Whether the deck is being inspected, and what happens if bad decking is found
- The wind and impact ratings of the product, rather than its brand alone
- What is being torn off, and what is being left in place
Ventilation
The part of a shingle roof nobody quotes on
A roof includes the air underneath it. Cooler air should enter low at the soffits, heat should rise and leave high, and the two need to be roughly balanced — exhaust without intake just pulls conditioned air out of the house.
When that path is not working, an Arizona attic becomes an oven that cooks the roof from below, and shingles age faster than their rated life for reasons that have nothing to do with the shingles. The usual culprit is dull: insulation topped up at some point and pushed over the soffit vents, blocking the intake.
It is worth raising because it is frequently the least expensive part of a re-roof and the part with the most noticeable day-to-day difference — the upstairs that never keeps up with the thermostat is often this.
Questions
The ones we get asked about this work
There are granules in my gutter. Is my roof failing?
A storm went through and the roof looks fine. Should I still get it checked?
Can I have new shingles laid over the old ones?
How do I compare two shingle bids that are miles apart on price?
Everything else we do
Request an inspection
Find out what your roof actually needs
Tell us where the roof is and what you are seeing. A licensed contractor walks it, photographs it, and shows you the findings. Free, and no obligation.