Roofing Contractors in Lynn, MA

Salt and wind from Kings Beach to Ward One

FEMA coastal guidance calls for 300-series stainless fasteners within roughly 3,000 feet of saltwater. In Lynn that band takes in Lynn Shore Drive, Kings Beach, Ward One, the ocean end of the Diamond District and the Lynnway frontage. Hot-dipped galvanized is the practical floor everywhere else in the city. Cheap electro-galvanized nails bleed rust streaks down a new roof in two seasons.

Never fasten copper flashing with galvanized nails. The two metals corrode each other, and you will be back at that chimney inside five years. Copper nails are standard on slate and cedar. The shoreline also falls in the windborne-debris wind exposure, and that changes the edges more than the field: six nails per shingle, starter course run up the rake as well as the eave, a continuous cleat under the drip edge. Our notes on coastal roofing and salt air on the North Shore go deeper.

Diamond District slate and copper

National Register listing tells you what is on the roof. It does not put your shingle color in front of a design review board, and a reroof in the district is a permit from Lynn Inspectional Services like any other. What it does mean is slate, usually original, on a roofline with more valley than field. Under 780 CMR slate can never be overlaid. It comes off to the deck.

Most calls we take on these houses are not tear-offs. They are failed valley metal, a cracked turret flashing, or two dozen slipped pieces after a hard blow, and slate roof repair costs a fraction of the alternative. Valleys, turret bases and gutter linings get copper and standing-seam metal rather than aluminum, and the same goes for the estate-scale houses on Sagamore Hill.

Three-deckers in Central Square, West Lynn and East Lynn

This is the bulk of Lynn and the bulk of our work here. Massachusetts allows two layers of asphalt and no more, so on most of these buildings the next roof is a full tear-off. That is where the surprises turn up.

• Board sheathing laid with gaps, and punky planks over the rear porch stack where the gutter return has been dumping for decades.
• A flat rear deck framed near level in 1910 that has settled since and now holds water for days.
• Chimneys and old skylight curbs sealed with roof cement where metal belongs.
• Party-wall and parapet edges where somebody ran the membrane up the wall and never terminated it.

We take the low-slope sections down to sound sheathing, build pitch back toward the outlet where the framing allows, and run fully adhered EPDM or heat-welded TPO. Our page on flat roof replacement explains how we pick between them. Then we tie the membrane into the pitched front with metal, not mastic.

Ice dams up the hill in Wyoma, Pine Hill and the Highlands

Design ground snow load in Lynn is 40 psf, verified from the 780 CMR Eighth Edition table. Confirm it with the building official on anything structural. Weight is rarely what fails here, though. Ice is.

Third floors and half-storeys in this city were finished long after the roof went on. Insulation got stuffed into the eave, the vent path disappeared, and now the deck runs warm while the edge stays frozen. Every asphalt reroof we do carries an ice barrier from the roof edge to at least 24 inches inside the exterior wall line, and at least 36 inches measured along the slope on pitches of 8:12 or steeper. The permanent fix is attic ventilation and insulation, not a heat cable strung along the gutter.

Mill-era brick downtown

Around Lynn Heritage State Park and the blocks off Central Square, the stock turns to brick: former shoe factories converted to apartments and offices, plus storefront-below blocks. Those are low-slope membrane over old built-up roofing, parapets on every side, and internal drains nobody has rodded in years. Commercial roofing on a building like that is a perimeter and drainage job far more than a field job.

Permits and cost

We pull the permit through Lynn Inspectional Services and file the liability certificate and workers' comp paperwork with it. Nobody should ask you to pull a homeowner permit so a crew can skip that step. Cost turns on square footage, how much sheathing is bad, whether the flat deck is in scope, and whether the job needs stainless throughout. We put it in writing after we walk it. Just over the line we also handle roofing in Swampscott and Saugus roof repair.