Roofing Contractors in West Roxbury, MA

The second layer already up there

Lift a corner shingle on a West Roxbury Cape and you usually find another roof under it. Overlays were the cheap answer in 1988. Nobody can stack a third layer, so the next job is a tear-off.

• Soft sheathing at the eave, where an ice dam pushed water under two layers.
• Nails driven through the old course that never bit a rafter.
• Chimney and sidewall flashing tarred over instead of replaced.
• Gable vents shingled shut, so the roof stopped breathing.

We strip to the deck and show you every bad board. These houses want architectural asphalt shingle roofing, the material a 1950s hip was framed to carry. A full roof replacement here is shorter work than people expect.

Knee-wall Capes: the neighborhood's ice dam machine

Boston sees about 92 days a year at or below 32 degrees but only about 23 that stay below freezing all day. That 69-day gap is the melt-refreeze cycle, working on 49.2 inches of average snow. A story-and-a-half Cape with a finished second floor is the region's most reliable ice dam producer.

Shingles alone do not fix it. Code minimum is an ice barrier from the roof edge to 24 inches inside the exterior wall line, 36 inches along the slope at 8:12 or steeper. We run past that, then treat the cause with attic ventilation and insulation work and air sealing at the knee wall doors. Start with the Massachusetts ice and water shield rule.

Wind on the high ground

Wind takes a roof apart at the edges first: the rake, the ridge cap, the starter course. On Bellevue Hill we nail exposed slopes to the high-wind pattern, hand-seal the rakes, and use a real starter strip.

The older houses near Centre Street

Around the Westerly Burial Ground and Theodore Parker Church the stock gets older: Victorians with steeper pitch, dormers and original slate. Slate can never be roofed over under 780 CMR. Most calls there are a slipped course or failed valley metal, where slate roof repair costs a fraction of a tear-off. Tall brick chimneys need flashing and chimney repair more often than the roof does.

Permit, snow load and cost

West Roxbury is Boston, so a reroof with no structural work goes through the ISD Short-Form Permit: $20 plus $10 per $1,000 of the estimate. We file it with the insurance certificate, workers' comp affidavit and safety paperwork. Ground snow load here is 40 psf, from the 780 CMR Eighth Edition table. Our Boston short-form roof permit walkthrough has the rest.

Price depends on pitch, square footage, layers coming off and how much sheathing is bad. We put it in writing after we walk it. Across the Charles we also handle roofing in Newton, and Jamaica Plain roof repair.