What is due on each part of your roof, and what is not

A roof is several parts on several clocks, and on a house with a flat section and a tile section it is two roofs on two sets of clocks. Enter when the house was built and what has been replaced on each part, and it will show where everything stands.

This tells you where to look. It is not an inspection and not a mitigation report. It sets ages against the service lives the trade generally expects. Barrel tile can outlast the range by decades; a built-up flat roof rarely reaches it, and ocean air shortens every piece of metal on both. Salt and drainage count for more than the year.

This runs on your own screen. Nothing is sent and nothing is stored.

Set the house, then set what has been replaced

When was the house built? What is on the roof now?

What has already been replaced?

Leave a row on Original if that part was never replaced, or if it was redone before you bought and nobody handed over the invoice. Unknown is the normal state of affairs here.

Roof covering Flashing at walls, valleys and penetrations Underlayment and secondary water barrier Gutters and downspouts Attic ventilation Skylights (if you have them) Chimney crown, cap and masonry (if you have them) Fascia and soffit Siding or exterior cladding Window seals

Two kinds of roof on one street, failing two different ways. Gravel hides its trouble; tile hides it underneath. Which is why flashing, not shingle, is the item most worth knowing the age of.

Tap to enlarge

1 Ridge caps. The ridge is first to bake, first to lift.
2 The field. Barrel tile or shingle, over an underlayment quietly doing the work.
3 Valleys. One line carrying what two slopes shed, at the pace this coast rains.
4 Flashing. Where salt reaches the metal years ahead of the covering it protects.
5 The vent boot. A rubber collar that hardens, cracks, and lets the rain straight in.
6 Eaves. Where the screen enclosure meets the roof, and where fasteners give up.

Why perfect tile can sit on a roof that is finished

Tile does not wear out on the timescale that matters here; the membrane under it and the metal around it do. When a roof is re-covered rather than stripped, the tile is new and the underlayment is whatever was there. On the flat section the same thing happens with a new cap sheet over an old base. The visible part resets; the working part does not, which is why this page asks about it separately.

Flashing and fasteners run on the shortest clock of all in ocean air. Metal that was sealed and kept on the last job can be rusting through under tile that looks flawless from the street, and a scupper that was never rebuilt can be the only thing wrong with a flat roof. If someone says the roof is sound, ask which part they mean.

Use this page

Copy or link to this freely, crediting seagraperoofing.com. If it helps a Broward homeowner see that the tile is fine and the flat section is not, or the reverse, it has done what it is for.

Holding quotes already? The quote comparison sets three of them side by side, row for row.