Flat and gravel roofs
Drive the older sections of Tamarac, Margate or north Pompano and you are looking at something the rest of the country associates with commercial buildings: entire neighbourhoods of homes built with flat, gravel-surfaced roofs. They are not shingle roofs missing their shingles — they are a different system entirely, and they age by different rules.
How the system works, and how it fails
The original assembly is built-up roofing: alternating layers of felt and hot asphalt, surfaced with gravel that shields the waterproofing from the sun. It works as long as the layers stay bonded and the water leaves. Sixty years on, most of these roofs carry one or two recover layers over the original, the gravel has thinned in the walked paths and drifted in the drains, and the flat geometry means water that does not drain simply waits — through an entire summer of daily rain, on the exact spots where the surfacing is thinnest.
Failure is rarely dramatic. It reads as blisters where trapped moisture vapourises under the sun, as alligatored asphalt where the gravel wandered off, as stains appearing on a ceiling far from any obvious defect — because on a flat roof, water travels between layers before it comes inside. By the time the ceiling speaks, the deck has usually been damp for a while.
What replacement means on this stock
Modern practice replaces built-up gravel with a membrane — modified bitumen or single-ply — and the honest quote starts with what comes off: how many accumulated layers, what the deck looks like after sixty summers, and how drainage will be improved rather than reproduced. Positive drainage, tapered where needed, is the upgrade that changes the roof’s life more than any membrane brand. And because these homes are usually one storey with easy access, the totals stay reasonable — the money should go into the system, not the logistics.