Treasure Coast specifics · Where Roofs Fail
Nothing Fails in the Middle of the Roof
Uplift starts at perimeters and corners. Water gets in at penetrations and flashings. The large open field of the roof, which is what a quote is usually priced by, is the part least likely to be the problem.
Tell us the age of the roof and whether anything is actually leaking. Those two answers decide what conversation we are having.
2005
A whole region re-roofed in eighteen months, and it is finishing together
No leak
Most people here are replacing a roof that works. We will say so
Our crews
We inspect, we photograph, and our own people do the work
Licensed
A licensed Florida general contractor
A price by the square, and silence about the edges
Roofs are quoted by area because area is easy to measure, and the area is the part that rarely fails. Wind pressure concentrates at the perimeter and at corners, which is where a covering starts to lift and where a failure propagates from. Water finds its way in around pipes, vents, skylights, chimneys and wall junctions. A quote that describes the field in detail and says nothing about edge fastening or how each penetration will be detailed has priced the straightforward two-thirds of the job.
The parts of a roof that actually decide it
- Perimeter and corner fastening, where uplift concentrates.
- Edge metal, and how the covering is secured to it.
- Every pipe, vent and penetration through the plane.
- Flashings at walls, chimneys and skylights.
- Valleys, and junctions between roof sections.
Why the edges carry the load
Wind flowing over a building creates the strongest negative pressure at the perimeter and at corners, not across the middle of a slope. That is why fastening schedules are tightened in those zones and why a covering that begins to lift almost always begins there.
Once an edge lifts, the wind gets underneath and the failure runs inward. It is the reason edge detail is disproportionately important compared with the area it occupies, and the reason it is worth asking about explicitly.
How we handle it
- 01Inspect and photograph every penetration and junction.
- 02Specify perimeter fastening rather than leaving it to the crew.
- 03Rebuild flashings instead of sealing over existing ones.
- 04Quote the details explicitly so they can be compared.
When you are comparing quotes, the useful questions are almost all about edges and penetrations. How is the perimeter being fastened, what is happening to the edge metal, and is every flashing being rebuilt or resealed? Those answers separate two quotes far more reliably than the brand of shingle does.
Said plainly
Where we stop
Good detailing greatly reduces the likelihood of failure and does not eliminate it. Sufficient wind exceeds any roof, and a roof that has been detailed properly is one that fails later and less badly rather than one that cannot fail.
FAQ
Common questions
- What should I ask a roofer that I am not asking?
- How the perimeter and corners will be fastened, what is happening to the edge metal, and whether every flashing is being rebuilt or resealed. Those three questions tell you more about a quote than anything about the covering.
- My leak is nowhere near the edge. Does this still apply?
- Water entry is usually at penetrations and flashings, which occur across the whole roof. Uplift is the one concentrated at the perimeter. The shared point is that neither happens in the open field.
- Is resealing a flashing ever acceptable?
- As a short-term measure on a sound roof, sometimes. As part of a replacement, no. Sealing over an old flashing during a re-roof is building the next leak into a new roof.
Roofs we work on
Shingle Roofs
Asphalt shingle is what most of this coast was re-roofed with after 2004, which means a very large number of shingle roofs here started their service lives inside the same eighteen months.
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Tile Roofs
On a tile roof the tile is a rain screen and the underlayment is the waterproofing. Tile outlives underlayment comfortably, so most tile roof work here is really underlayment work.
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Metal Roofs
Metal genuinely lasts on this coast when it is specified and detailed properly. What decides that is rarely the panel. It is the fastener system, the coating and what happens at every edge and penetration.
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Flat & Low Slope
Flat and low slope sections on this coast are very often over an addition, a Florida room or a carport enclosure. They fail differently from the main roof and they usually fail first.
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Leak Diagnosis
Water gets in at one place and appears somewhere else entirely. Diagnosing that properly is the whole job, and it is the part most often skipped in favor of sealing whatever is nearest.
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Deck & Underlayment
The visible roof covering gets all the attention. The deck it is fastened to and the underlayment over that are what decide whether the roof stays on and whether water gets in once it does not.
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More treasure coast specifics
The 2005 Cohort
Frances and Jeanne put most of this coast under new roofs across 2005 and 2006. Those roofs did not age independently, and they are not going to finish independently either.
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A Roof That Does Not Leak
The usual trigger for a roof replacement on this coast is not water in the house. It is a letter about the age of the roof, which is a genuinely uncomfortable position to be put in.
Read more →
The Two Inspections
These are two different documents produced by different people for different reasons, and owners conflate them constantly. Knowing which one you have, and which one you need, saves a surprising amount of confusion.
Read more →
Next step
Find out what is actually wrong with it.
An inspection, photographs of what we found, and a written scope. If the honest answer is that it can wait another season, that is the answer you will get.