| Issue #31, October 27, 2006 |
Put A Lid On It
The roof of your house is one of the most vital components of your building. When a roof starts going bad, it can really cause some serious damage to other parts of your home. Too many homeowners let an old roof simply leak when it rains. But what they don’t realize is, in the long run, this hurts the home more then helping it. Water ruins things, plain and simple. Water in unwanted places, such as inside walls and sheetrock, can cause mold damage, which means that not only will you have to spend money to replace the roof, but you will also have to spend money ripping out the moldy walls or ruined floors.
People also worry about roofs when they purchase homes. So, from an investment perspective, maintaining a good roof is an important part of selling your home in today’s real estate market.
With that being said, do not be scared. Roofs last a long time, about 25 years for most buildings, so if you don’t have a leak, the odds are that you don’t have a problem. However, if the shingles on your roof are beginning to rot off and expose the plywood underneath, you’d better start saving, because it is just a matter of time before the rain gets to that wood, rots it, softens it, and then it begins to leak.
Having your roof fixed is an expensive project and requires the skill of a good roofer who can manage all that is involved. There are four basic costs in having your roof done. The first cost is that of the materials. You need to buy shingles, plywood, nails and tar paper to put a new roof up on your house. Depending on how bad your roof is, you may or may not need new plywood hammered in. You can figure that if you have a bad leak, you are going to need new plywood on at least some portion of the roof.
The second cost is the cost of the labor involved in tearing off the old shingles on your house (this creates quite a mess) which brings me to the third cost: the cost of a big dumpster and labor for cleanup. The final cost is that of the labor that it takes to install the new shingles.
Roofing is not rocket science, but it is a lot of work and is not a one-man job. It is also a time-sensitive project because of the chance of getting caught in rain. A fair amount of planning must be done before a crew can get to work, as well as timing with the weather so that the job can get done in a short period. It’s no fun for you or your home when a roofing project gets caught in a rainstorm. You have to pray that a tarp covering your house will hold out if this happens. A good roofer should do that for you, though.
So what’s a homeowner to do? Where can you find a good a roofer that won’t overcharge you for materials or stretch out the time it takes to put up a roof to increase labor costs? Do honest roofers exist? Of course they do! And many of them live here. The first thing you should do when looking for a roofer is, of course, check in the Dan’s Papers service directory for phone numbers. You should also shop around to get prices by calling at least five different roofers. Finding a reputable roofer is not hard in the Hamptons because there are many companies, which means that business is competitive. Talk to your friends and ask them if they have had a good experience with a roofer, or drive around to look at other homes like yours that are being roofed and find out how much it is costing.
You can keep your roofer honest by asking for a receipt once the materials have been purchased. Find out how much a bundle of shingles costs for your roof, (they go for about $25-$40 a bundle) how many square feet your roof is, and how many square feet are in a bundle. Just divide the square footage of the roof by the number of square feet that one bundle of shingles will cover in order to determine how many bundles you will need. You want to have some extra bundles of shingles so that you don’t run out, and any extra bundles that you buy can always be returned to the supply yard. Be sure to save a bundle for yourself so that if you need to do any minor repair work in the future, you have an extra bundle handy.
Be sure that you pick a shingle color that you like-you can’t just decide in the middle of the roofing project that you don’t like the color- so take the time to think about what color roof you want. When your roofing project is all over the and job is done well, your house will feel like it just got a really great haircut. Good luck!
–David Lion Rattiner
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