Most of the difference between two roofing quotes here is not the covering. It is what the covering is fastened to, what it runs into at every wall, and whether the property has one roof or four. The pages here walk each service the way a careful owner would walk a quote.
Five lines that make two quotes comparable here
- What is up there now. Shingle, standing seam, or ribbed panel with exposed screws? Three different products, three different failure modes, and only the first is judged by age.
- Whether it has to come off at all. Sound panels with tired fasteners and worn coating are not a tear-off. A bidder who works only in shingle has one answer available to him.
- The sheathing. Solid, or boards laid with gaps? Pre-war housing here is usually the second, and the per-sheet rate belongs in the quote before the roof is opened.
- The back wing. Almost every older house has one, it is almost always shallower than the front, and it is where the leaks are. It needs its own line.
- The snow. Metal sheds it in a slab, not gradually. Walk the eaves and name what sits under each one.
- 1 The ridge cap. On metal it is a separate piece with closures under it. Blown snow finds the joint that was never closed.
- 2 The seams. A standing-seam roof lives at its seams and clips, not at its surface. The panel outlasts what holds it.
- 3 The valley. One channel taking what two slopes shed — and on the north side, holding snow long after the field is clear.
- 4 Where the ell meets the wall. A lower wing dying into the main house. Two roofs, one wall, and nobody sure whose seam it is.
- 5 The fasteners. Exposed screws through the panel, each with a rubber washer. The washers age; the screws work loose.
- 6 The eave. Drip edge, gutter, and the question every metal roof asks: where does a slab of snow go when it lets go?
The work
Why roofs struggle across this valley
Two things run through all three counties. The first is the freeze cycle: water that melts and refreezes dozens of times a winter finds every joint that was sealed rather than built. The second is the covering itself. On the amount of metal that is up here, failure does not arrive through the surface — it arrives through the fasteners, the laps, the closures and the coating, every one of which can be renewed without touching the panel.