The decline of a neighborhood.

There are 22 houses on my street. All built in 1955 originally roofed with tar and gravel. Over the years I have roofed 14 of them with much effort, I add, because of the pitiful previous roofs I had to tear off and repair. This is a picture of my next door neighbor's "new" roof. I had roofed it 25 years ago with nary a problem until last year. The double coverage roll roofing I had used on the 1/12 was finally failing. I told my neighbor to call insurance and they granted her a new roof. However, because she had a cut-rate policy, she did not collect replacement value and only received $3200. I gave her a price of $4800 and that was a deal. Material was going to cost $2400. I was going to do a complete tear off, double coverage underlayment on the 2/12, special valley underlayment, 4 1/2" exposure with 15 sq. name brand 3-tabs, and 8 sq. self adhere base and cap on the 1/12. Everything was going to be new and I was even going to fix the ventilation.

Two weeks ago on a Saturday, 6 guys show up with a pallet of un-wrapped seconds. They tear off the front leaving the old felt and valley. They did not tear off the double coverage roll roofing and did not install new underlayment. They slapped on the seconds and were gone in 6 hours. Material could not have cost more than $500 if they had indeed purchased it.

I do not know if she got scammed or if she is just stupid because I had explicitly warned her that you can not shingle a 1/12 pitch and that shingling a 2/12 is risky without extreme caution.

Well, you know what's coming next after it starts leaking...

...the dreaded 'blue' roof.

Well, shoot! I hate to hear that one of the crews from around here has traveled to your area. But it's all good because there's plenty of other equally crappy crews still here to make up the difference. :laugh:

We could not use double coverage selvage all of our low pitch had to be modified or go back to T&G when people looked at the price difference they usually chose T&G I was finally able to cut a deal with the mfg of a modified which brought the price down, and with a double 10 & 10 warranty we were able to to sell a modified system rather than the old T&G