Nobody can tell you the true condition of a roof until the old covering is in the dump trailer. Punky sheathing at the eave line turns up on enough older houses in this area that we walk into every job expecting to find some. The usual causes are slow ones: a pipe boot that cracked years ago, a valley that was never lined right, a gutter that overflowed every hard rain and wicked water back under the starter course. When we find it we stop, show you the section, and price the sheathing at our material cost before anything gets covered up. You should hear about bad decking from us on the roof, not from a number at the end.
A roof replacement has one genuinely uncertain hour in it, and it is the one right after the old shingles come off. Everything before that is scheduling and tear-off. Everything after is a system going back down in a known order. But the moment the deck is bare, the house finally shows you what it has been doing for the last twenty years, and that is where a job either stays on plan or turns into a conversation in the driveway. Here is what we are looking for in that hour, why it matters more than the shingle you picked, and how the decking question gets handled so it never turns into a surprise.
Why nobody can quote decking honestly before tear-off
Sheathing hides under three layers of roof, and no amount of walking a roof from above tells you for certain what the wood is doing. You can feel a spongy plane through your boots and you can read the attic underside for stains and daylight, both of which we do. Neither one gives you a board-by-board answer.
So we quote it the honest way, which is to name what replacement sheathing costs and tell you plainly that we do not yet know how much of it you will need. The alternative, pretending the deck is fine and then producing a change order at ten in the morning, is how people end up feeling worked over on their own driveway. On older houses around Saint Clair we plan for the possibility on every job, because soft plywood along the eaves turns up often enough that assuming otherwise is not planning at all.
The slow leaks that rot a deck without ever staining a ceiling
Almost none of the decking damage we find came from something dramatic. The culprits are patient. A pipe boot cracks open in year eight and lets a small amount of water past on every rain for a decade. A valley that was never lined properly moves water under the shingle edge instead of over it. A gutter that overflows in every hard spring cell wicks water back under the starter course at the eave.
What those three have in common is that none of them announces itself inside the house. The water never gets far enough to stain a ceiling, so the homeowner has no reason to suspect anything, while the sheathing quietly goes punky. That is why the eaves are the first place we walk on a bare deck, and why we take a hard look at the boot penetrations and the valleys before the underlayment goes down. A new shingle nailed into soft decking has nothing to hold onto, and the roof you just paid for starts loosening from the fasteners out.
How the decking conversation actually goes
When we find soft sheathing, work stops and somebody comes down and gets you. Preston or Heber puts a hand on the section, you see the same thing we are seeing, and we explain how far it runs and what it will take. Replacement sheathing is billed at our material cost with no markup on it, and nothing gets covered until you have said go.
Most of the time the answer is smaller than people fear. A few sheets along one eave, a section around a chimney, the plane under a valley. Occasionally it is a bigger stretch, and you find that out standing on the ground looking at it rather than reading it on an invoice a week later. The reason we do it this way is not generosity, it is that we live in this county and we run into our customers. A homeowner who felt ambushed over decking tells that story at the gas station for years, and they should.
The parts of the system that go on before the shingles
Once the deck is sound, the order matters. Self-adhering membrane goes into the valleys and along the eaves, because those are the two places where water sits long enough to look for a way in. Synthetic underlayment covers the field. Flashing and pipe boots get replaced rather than reused, since reusing the exact component that failed last time is how a brand new roof leaks in the same spot it always did.
Then the shingles. What we install on Saint Clair homes is architectural laminate, built from bonded layers so it has real thickness and a higher wind rating, and we are an Owens Corning Preferred installer, so that is the line we know best. The upgrade worth talking through is impact resistance, which raises the size of stone it takes to do real damage rather than making a roof hailproof. Anybody promising you hailproof is selling. Nails go in to the count the manufacturer specifies, which sounds obvious and is exactly what gets shortcut on a rushed install.
What the day looks like from your side
Most single-story houses around here are stripped, decked, dried in and shingled between morning and evening of the same day. Two-story homes, steep pitches, cut-up rooflines with several dormers, or a deck needing significant sheathing work carry into a second day, and we tell you which one you are before we start rather than after.
You do not have to be home, though somebody usually is. Move vehicles out of the drive, take pictures off the walls upstairs because the hammering travels, and tell us where the pets will be. We tarp the landscaping and put the trailer where it does the least damage to the yard, then run magnets over the drive, the yard and the road edge before anybody leaves. The whole sequence, including the warranty paperwork, is laid out on the Saint Clair roof replacement page. If you are not sure yet whether you are replacing or repairing, start with a free roof inspection, and if a storm is what put you here, storm damage repair covers how the claim side works.
Common Questions
What happens if you find rotten decking on my roof?
What happens if you find rotten decking on my roof?
We stop, come get you, and show you the section before anything covers it. Replacement sheathing is billed at our material cost with no markup, and the job does not move forward until you have said go. Nobody should find out about their decking from a bill after the fact.
Can you roof over my existing shingles instead of tearing off?
Can you roof over my existing shingles instead of tearing off?
We tear off. Layering over the old roof hides whatever the decking is doing, traps heat that shortens the life of the new shingles, and makes every flashing detail worse. The savings up front are not worth the roof you end up with, so we do not offer it.
When does patching stop making sense on an old roof?
When does patching stop making sense on an old roof?
Look at age past roughly twenty-two years alongside what you can see: shingles gone brittle enough to crack when lifted, patches scoured down to the mat, curling at the edges, and water coming in at more than one spot. A single leak in otherwise solid material is worth patching. Once an aging roof is failing in several places at once, patches are only buying months. If a repair would genuinely get you another three good years, that is what we will recommend, even though it is the smaller job.
The shingle you pick is the part everybody thinks about, and it is the part that matters least to whether the roof lasts. What decides that is the wood underneath and the details at the valleys, the eaves and the penetrations, all of which are only visible for a few hours on one day. Get somebody up there who will show you what they find on that day. The look costs nothing and you keep the written assessment either way.
Wondering What Is Under Your Shingles?
Free look at your Saint Clair roof, photographs of what we find, and a written assessment with a price on it. Preston or Heber comes out, not a salesman.
Free Hail Inspection (417) 808-0802