Lindenwold Roofing With the Photographs to Prove It

Somebody walks the roof rather than squinting at it from the kerb. The camera goes over each slope, into the valleys, around the chimney and any skylight kerbs, across the rubber collars on the vent pipes and along the metal at the eaves. Where there is safe attic access we photograph the underside as well, because staining on the boards shows you where water is tracking far better than the covering above it ever will.

A set of photographs of your own roof and a written note against each one — what it is, whether it matters now, and what it is likely to do if it is left. If there is work worth quoting, a line-item estimate follows. If there is not, you are told that instead, and the file is still yours.

Rotten decking is the usual one, and it is the usual reason a roofing bill moves. We photograph the boards before anything goes back down and price the replacement by the sheet at a rate agreed in the original estimate, so the sum changes but the rate does not. Nothing extra gets done before you have seen the picture.

A survey is usually a few days out in ordinary weather and sooner when there is water coming in, because an active leak is a different kind of appointment. The written estimate follows the visit within a couple of days rather than on the spot — the measurements and the photographs take that long to turn into real numbers.

Clearing the gutters and the valleys so water leaves the roof instead of sitting on it, keeping branches off the slope, and having the flashing and the boots looked at every few years. Boots are rubber and they perish long before the shingles around them do, which is why so many leaks sit next to a vent pipe rather than anywhere dramatic.

Two decades and a bit is the usual figure for a dimensional asphalt covering in this part of the state, and noticeably less for the flat three-tab product that went onto a lot of older Camden County houses. Slopes that take the afternoon sun give out first. A covering laid straight over an older one rarely gets as far as one laid on clean boards. None of that settles your particular roof, though. The photographs settle it.

Ask for the inspection in writing and see whether the photographs come with it. Ask whether the estimate is line-item or a single figure. Ask who will actually be on the roof, and whether it is the same people who surveyed it. A contractor who is comfortable answering those three in order is usually comfortable for a reason.