Roofing Contractors in Chelsea, MA

Flat decks, parapets, and drains inside the wall

The standard Chelsea roof is near-flat, walled by a brick or framed parapet, with no gutter anywhere. Water leaves through an internal drain or a scupper cut through the parapet, then down a leader inside the building. Plug that drain and the deck ponds. A century-old board deck holding four inches of standing water is how top-floor ceilings come down. We strip to the boards, replace the punky planks, re-pitch toward the drain where the framing allows, and set a fully adhered or heat-welded single-ply. Our comparison of EPDM, TPO and PVC flat roofs covers the choice, and flat roof replacement is what most of these jobs become.

Layered roofing on investor-owned buildings

Much of the rental stock here has changed hands repeatedly, and each owner bought the cheapest fix on offer that year. We routinely open a roof and find three systems: tar and gravel, a torch-down cap sheet, a thin membrane glued over both. Sometimes the honest answer is still one targeted roof repair, and we will say so.

• Ponding scars where the built-up roof settled between joists.
• Cap sheet laps torched cold that never bonded.
• Pitch pockets at dead vent pipes packed with cement and nothing else.
• Parapet bases where three generations of flashing stop short of the coping.

Brick blocks: coping, cornices, and the flashing line

The masonry blocks around Chelsea Square fail at the top, not the middle. This area sees about 92 days a year at or below 32 degrees but only about 23 that stay frozen all day. That 69-day gap works open mortar joints and lifts coping stones every winter. Water gets in behind the coping and stains a ceiling three floors down that everyone blames on the roof. We reset the coping bed and carry the membrane up the parapet under new metal as roof flashing and chimney repair.

Salt off Chelsea Creek and the Mystic

Admiral's Hill, the blocks below the Chelsea Street Bridge and the whole waterfront edge fall inside the roughly 3,000-foot band where FEMA coastal guidance calls for 300-series stainless fasteners. Hot-dipped galvanized is the practical minimum out there. Never let a crew nail copper flashing with galvanized nails, because the two metals corrode each other. More in our notes on roofing in salt air.

Permits, staging, and snow load

Chelsea issues its own permits through the city's inspectional services department, on the city's own fee schedule. This is not Boston, so nothing goes through Boston ISD. We pull it and file the liability certificate and the workers' comp affidavit. Design ground snow load here is 40 psf, verified from the 780 CMR Eighth Edition table; confirm it with the building official on any structural work. On the pitched roofs up on Bellingham Hill, code requires an ice barrier from the roof edge to at least 24 inches inside the exterior wall line.

With no side yards and constant truck traffic to the Tobin Bridge and the produce market, we settle staging and dumpster placement at the estimate, not the morning of the tear-off. We dry the deck in every night. If weather opens one mid-job, emergency roof repair is a phone call, not a ticket in a queue.

Storefront-below, apartments-above blocks get the same crew and materials as our commercial roofing work, scheduled around the businesses downstairs. We also cover roofing in Everett and Revere roof repair.