Roofing Guide Part 2
In today’s blog I am continuing the conversation about roofing, which we covered in part 1. Discussing roofing is important for anyone that is interested in doing the repairs themselves or hiring someone. I won’t be completing the entire section today, but I will be covering the basic details needed to shingle a roof. There are a lot of variables that can come up on your own project that can’t exactly be answered in this blog today. But I hope to touch on most of what it takes to get your roof done.
Side note:
As a side note, we recently did a roofing job and the customer was upset over the nails poking out through the sheeting.The reason this happened is due to the thickness of the plywood that is on the roof. The requirement of asphalt shingle producers is that the nail penetrates at a depth of 3/4″. The plywood that was existent on the roof was less than 3/4″ therefore showed nails poking through. If you would like to avoid this from happening then at a minimum install 3/4″ thick plywood for the shingles to fasten to. It is more expensive to replace existing plywood for a thicker material, but if you are concerned about nails poking through, it is worth the extra cost.
2.5.1 Tear Off Continued
Once you have all of the old shingles and felt torn off, it is time to pull or pound down every nail or staple that has remained stuck in the plywood. If this part is skipped you will have future leaks in the areas where a nail or staple has punched through the felt. It is time consuming to hunt for every object that is poking up, but it is well worth the effort. And with the same tool that I mentioned previously. The roof shovel not only removes shingles, it also can pull nails and staples without moving around on your knees with a hammer and pry bar.
3. Dry-rot Inspection
At this stage you have your roof off, now is the best time to do a dry-rot inspection. Walk around and look for any rotten wood, which will either appear very wet and soft or dry and crumbly. Make the necessary repairs, which I will cover dry-rot repairs in a future post, by cutting the plywood or trim back to the middle of a rafter as to allow a place to nail for your new piece of plywood or trim.
4. Dry-In
Next step now is to dry-in the roof. This means putting a waterproof material over the wood in order to prevent moisture from getting through. Roofs always have a back up for protecting from unwanted water getting through. The previous means of protecting your roof was always using a wide felt paper that would overlap each other and create a protective shell. The felt looks like this. It is still widely popular and is easy to work with, but with new technology, comes alternative methods. There is a new product out now to put on your roof instead of using felt. It is a synthetic material that lasts a very long time, is safe to walk on, and is much lighter to work with that traditional felt. An example of it can be found here. Whatever material you choose, just make sure you install it. AND when installing, I always start from the bottom. You are looking to have each row overlap the one below by at least an inch.
4. Shingles
The last step is putting your shingles down. Make sure you start from the bottom of your roof (not the top), and follow the manufacturers installation requirements. We use Owen’s Corning Class A Fire rated 30 year composition shingle. Cut around roof jacks (the pipes sticking up through the roof), allow overlap so at to avoid water getting inside the house.
And there you have it. Roofing a house.
Next blog will be next Wednesday. I will try to get caught up on my posts. Sorry for the slow production on my part. In the meantime don’t hesitate what we have to offer on our home page.