Roofing Contractors in Boston, MA

What we find on Boston roofs, neighborhood by neighborhood

The triple-decker belt

Dorchester (02122, 02124, 02125), South Boston (02127), Roxbury (02119) and East Boston (02128) are stacked with hipped three-deckers built between 1890 and 1930. Nearly all of them sit on board sheathing, not plywood, with a flat or near-flat deck in the middle of the hip. That center deck is where the leaks start. We strip it, check every board, and set membrane on the flat while the pitched faces get architectural asphalt. A full roof replacement in Boston on a three-decker is usually two to three days if the weather holds.

Back Bay, the South End and Beacon Hill

Back Bay brownstones and South End bowfronts carry continuous mansards, so your slate face ties into the neighbors on both sides and the tie-in detail matters more than the field. Curved bowfront cornices need custom-cut work. Beacon Hill adds shallow-pitch slate, flat-lock copper, clustered brick chimneys and one-way brick streets with no staging room. It is slate roof repair and low-slope membrane replacement on the same building, in the same afternoon.

Downtown, Fort Point and the Seaport

02110, 02111 and 02210 are mostly commercial low-slope over occupied space: ballasted EPDM, TPO, modified bitumen. Fort Point is a landmark district on top of that, so parapets, mechanical curbs and anything visible from the street get reviewed before a single fastener goes in.

Permits: Boston does it differently

A residential reroof with no structural work goes through Boston Inspectional Services on a Short-Form Permit. The fee is $20 to apply plus $10 per $1,000 of the work estimate. We file the trade license front and back, the certificate of liability insurance, the Workers Comp affidavit, the signed homeowner contract, the Site Safety Plan affidavit and the Mattocks-Higgins affidavit. If a contractor asks you to pull the permit under your own name, walk away. Here is how the Boston ISD short-form roof permit works in plain language.

In a historic district, Boston Landmarks Commission approval has to be in hand before ISD will issue the permit. That covers the Historic Beacon Hill District, the Back Bay Architectural District, the South End Landmark District, Bay Village, the Fort Point Channel Landmark District, and the Aberdeen, Bay State Road/Back Bay West, Highland Park, Mission Hill Triangle and Saint Botolph conservation districts. BLC can be reached at 617-635-1935. Build the review into your schedule, because historic district roof approval in Beacon Hill and Back Bay runs on a meeting calendar, not on demand.

Snow, ice and the 40 psf number

Boston's design ground snow load is 40 psf in the 780 CMR Eighth Edition table. Confirm the current value with the building official on your permit. The city averages 49.2 inches of snow a year at Logan; winter 2014-15 put down 110.6 inches. But the total is not what wrecks roofs. Boston sees about 92 days a year at or below 32 degrees and only about 23 that stay below freezing all day. That gap melts and refreezes water at the eaves, over and over, until flashing, mortar and slate give up. Massachusetts code answers it with an ice barrier from the lowest roof edge to at least 24 inches inside the exterior wall line, and 36 inches along the slope on anything 8:12 or steeper. We pair it with attic ventilation and insulation work so the ice has less reason to form, and when it does form, ice dam removal is steam, never hatchets.

The harbor side: East Boston, Southie and the Seaport

East Boston, the Southie flats and the Seaport sit in salt air. Within roughly 3,000 feet of saltwater, FEMA coastal guidance calls for 300-series stainless fasteners; hot-dipped galvanized is the practical floor. Copper nails go with copper flashing, cedar and slate, and copper never gets fastened with galvanized, because two dissimilar metals in a salty, wet environment corrode each other. These blocks also fall in or near the 780 CMR windborne debris region, so nailing patterns and edge metal get upgraded rather than eyeballed.

We work the bordering communities on the same terms: roofing contractors in Cambridge across the Charles, and Brookline roof replacement on the Beacon Street side. Same crew, same permit discipline, different building department.