When it is time
A roof tells you before it fails.
Curling or cupping shingles, granules piling up in the gutters, dark patches where the mat is showing through, nail heads backing out, a ridge line that is starting to look wavy. Those are a roof at the end of its life, not a roof with a problem. Once you are patching the same slope twice in two years, replacement is usually the cheaper number.
The other honest signal is age. Most three-tab roofs around here give you 15 to 20 years, architectural closer to 25 to 30. If yours is in that window and a storm just went through, get it looked at before the next one rather than after.
- AFull tear-off, not an overlayGoing over an old roof hides the decking and shortens the life of the new shingles. We take it down to the deck so we can see what we are nailing into.
- BThe decking gets checkedSoft or rotted sheathing gets replaced before anything goes back on. That is the part nobody sees and the part that decides whether the roof lasts.
- CNew underlayment every timeUnderlayment is the second line of defence. It goes down new, with ice and water where it belongs at the eaves and valleys.
