Shingle roofs
Shingle roofs in Los Angeles
Composition shingle on postwar duplexes and ranch houses. The flat addition over the back is priced as its own section.
The building visit is free. Your file starts that day, with photos of your roof.
Composition shingle is on many of the county's postwar duplexes and ranch houses, and on small buildings with a pitched roof. In this climate the sun does more of the damage than the rain. The slopes that face south and west take the most heat and usually show it first.
What owners notice
- Tabs lifted or missing after a week of Santa Ana wind
- Corners curling, or tabs cracked across
- Granules collecting in the gutters and at the downspouts
- A stain on a ceiling near the chimney, along a wall or around a vent pipe
- Patches where the dark mat shows through the surface
Repair or re-roof
Lifted and missing tabs, a split vent boot and worn flashing at a chimney or a wall are repairs. Each one is a pin on the plan, and each gets its own line in the file once it is fixed.
When a whole slope has lost its granules, a repair in one spot tends to move the leak to the next. Then the slope is re-roofed: the old shingle comes off, the deck is checked, and new felt and new shingle go down. The scope says which slopes need it now and which have years left.
The flat section at the back
Many duplexes and ranch houses here have a flat addition behind the pitched roof, and the line where the two meet is a common place for water to get in. We roof the addition as a flat section and flash its join to the shingle as part of the same job. More on flat and low-slope roofs.
How the visit goes
- The free building visit, about 45 minutes a roof: each slope, the flashing and the vent pipes, then the ceilings under them where we can get in.
- Before the day is out, the plan of your roof with a pin and a photo for each thing we saw.
- The written scope follows within 48 hours. Each slope is priced on its own.
- The repair or the re-roof, then the final page in the building's file.
What decides the price of a slope
- The area and pitch of each slope
- How many layers of shingle are on it now
- The deck, once the old shingle is off
- Chimneys, skylights, vent pipes and walls to flash around
- The shingle you choose
A full re-roof is set out on roof replacement, including the permit and how the tenants are told.
Questions about shingle roofs
Why did the wind lift our shingles?
Each tab is held down by a sealant strip that bonds it to the shingle below. Years of summer heat dry that strip out, and a dry fall wind can then lift tabs that no longer hold. Lifted tabs can be resealed or replaced while the shingle around them is sound.
Is a single house too small a job?
No. A house gets the same free visit and the same written scope as a twelve-unit building, and the same file at the end.
Can the front slope be done and the back left?
Yes, where the back still has years in it. Each slope is its own line in the scope, and a slope you hold stays on the plan with a date to look at it again.
Repairs and leaks
Tenant reporting a leak? We come the same day.
Give us the address and the unit. We stop the water that day and tell you, or the tenant, once it has.
Roofs we work on
Every kind of roof in the county, flat ones first.
Start here
Need the roof explained to someone else? We'll write it down.
Four questions about the building, then your ZIP and phone.
- 1Which building is it?
- 2How many units?
- 3Who needs the paperwork?
- 4By when?
The building visit is free. Or call (310) 857-2520.