What on your roof is due, and what the insurer thinks is due

A roof is several parts on several clocks, and around the bay one of those clocks is set by an insurance company rather than by the weather. Enter when the house was built and what has been replaced, and it will show where each part actually stands, which is not always what the policy assumes.

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. Here a roof over a well-vented attic can outlast the range, and one over a hot, damp attic can fall short of it by years. Heat and humidity count for more than the calendar.

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Enter the house, then mark what has been done

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 a previous owner may have done it to renew a policy and the paperwork did not come with the house. Unknown is a normal answer 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

A roof here rarely fails where you can see it. It fails underneath, and at the metal. Which is why flashing, not shingle, is the item most worth knowing the age of.

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1 Ridge caps. Full sun, no shade, ever. They cook before anything else on the roof does.
2 The field. Shingle, or tile sitting on felt that is doing the actual waterproofing.
3 Valleys. Two slopes emptying through one line, every single afternoon.
4 Flashing. The metal salt air finds long before it touches the covering.
5 The vent boot. Rubber baked brittle by sun, and the bay area’s most ordinary leak.
6 Eaves. Where the Florida room ties in, and where the hardware corrodes first.

Want someone to look before the inspection?

Call (866) 227-2038

Say how old the roof is and whether the insurer has set a date, and you will be connected with a provider covering your side of the bay.

Why the shingle date on the policy is not the roof date

When a roof is laid over the previous one, the surface is new and the underlayment beneath it is whatever was there. The insurer sees the new shingle; the next downpour sees the old membrane. That is why this page asks about underlayment on its own line, and why on many houses around the bay the honest answer is that nobody knows when the deck was last exposed.

Flashing works the same way. Sealing the old metal at a wall or a vent stack is faster than replacing it, and it happens often enough that a roof from five years ago can be relying on flashing from the eighties. If someone says the roof is recent, ask whether the penetrations are.

Use this page

Copy or link to this freely, crediting crossbayroofing.com. If it helps someone around the bay tell what the insurer is asking for from what the roof actually needs, it has done its job.

Quotes already in hand? The comparison checklist lines up three of them, row against row.