Roofing Contractors in Brookline, MA

Slate and tile: the metal fails long before the stone does

Most Brookline slate calls are not a dead roof. The slate is fine. What failed is a rusted valley, step flashing at a dormer cheek, or chimney counterflashing somebody replaced with a trowel of roof cement in 1988. Fix the metal and the roof keeps going, which is why slate roof repair is the first conversation on Fisher Hill, not the last.

When slate really is done, it comes off to the boards. Replacements get matched by size, thickness and color and hung with copper nails, never face-nailed through a sound slate.

Copper is half the roof here

The gutters off Aspinwall Hill are often copper, built into the cornice rather than screwed on afterward. Copper solders and lasts, but only if nobody sets the wrong metal against it. Galvanized fasteners in copper flashing start galvanic corrosion and chew the joint from inside. We keep metals consistent on chimney flashing repair and solder copper gutter installation.

Historic review here is the town's, not Boston's

Brookline is its own municipality with its own local historic districts, High Street Hill and Cottage Farm among them. The Boston Landmarks Commission has no authority on this side of the line, and permits go through Brookline's own building department. Repairing in kind is usually straightforward. Changing something visible, slate to asphalt or copper to aluminum, goes to the town's preservation review, which runs on its own calendar.

Steep pitch, deep eaves, February ice dams

780 CMR wants the ice barrier at least 24 inches inside the exterior wall line, and 36 inches along the slope on pitches of 8:12 or greater. Nearly every Queen Anne and Tudor roof here is steeper than 8:12 with a deep overhang, so the 24-inch measurement alone can finish outside the wall and protect nothing. See our note on the Massachusetts ice and water shield requirement.

Boston sees about 92 days a year at or below 32 degrees but only about 23 that stay below freezing all day. That gap builds the dams on Corey Hill, and these houses make it worse: finished third floors, knee walls, dormer cheeks, roof planes changing direction six times before reaching a gutter. Heat cable is a bandage. Attic ventilation and insulation is the repair.

Low-slope multifamily around Coolidge Corner

Beacon and Harvard Streets are lined with 1910s brick apartment blocks: membrane over old built-up, parapets all around, internal leaders that clog every fall. No driveway to stage from, and the trolley reservation takes the curb. Flat roof replacement covers the membrane choices.

Design ground snow load in Brookline is 40 psf, from the 780 CMR Eighth Edition table. Weight matters here: tile and slate are far heavier than asphalt, so putting tile back on a frame that carried three-tab for forty years is an engineering question. We also handle roofing in Newton and Jamaica Plain roof repair.