How Do I Know if My Roofer Did a Good Job?

 

Crooked courses. 

Uneven rakes and eaves. 

Reused flashing, pipe boots, and other accessories.

“Those are my red flags. That gets me to diving deeper into it to look for correct step flashing, apron flashing, and counter flashing.”

Shingle rows aren’t straight, ridge vent or counter flashing is sloppy.

The way pipe boots are installed is a telltale sign of whether or not you know what you’re doing.

Poor clean-up. 

“In the winter, all shingles tend to stick up and look wavy. It almost makes me sick to my stomach to look at cold weather installs. (so the roof could look shotty, but in reality, just hasn’t weathered) but the sun will make 85% of them completely flat by the summer. “

Nail patterns 

Staggers 

Overhangs

Flex seal

Reused flashing

“The biggest way I could think of to try and broaden a gap between competitors and us before the installation process is to make them look at our proposal to see if:

It says they use synthetic felt and ice and water shield at all

    Tar paper is garbage, and some roofers still use it.

It says exactly where it’s used because if they leave an area out, their material warranty is voided.

It says they’ll register the warranty because if not, it’s basically an under the table job.

Most of the issues I stated involve getting on the roof and prying up shingles with a bar.”

These issues would be:

Improper length nails for the job, such as 1” and 1 1/4” on a layover.

The improper roofing material for the pitch, but this can be a homeowner cheaping out and asking for this

Not squaring off headlap corners in woven valleys

Orienting the common bond wrong inside woven valleys

Not countering the flashing into the brick and mortar or masonry is one of the dumbest mistakes. 

Installing drip edge in a backwards order on a rolled roof of any kind

Not resheathing plank boards that are spaced way farther than 1/4”

Not nailing down the bottom flange of pipe boots

Trapping all penetrations so that the bottom flange is no longer exposed in the correct overlapping order.

If a roofer does a redeck-not installing H clips can come back to bite them. Improper ventilation can cause more warping without H clips to hold them.

For more information about roofing, or what to ask a roofing contractor, visit our Roofing Blog!