Underlayment

I still use UL 15# and UL 30# and whichever I&W I get for valleys and eaves. That said, I don't worry about it too much. I expect my slate and copper to outlast anything under them and still not leak when it all turns to dust.

The Underlay Story The execs at a major shingle manufacturer felt they needed to increase sales somehow. Memos were sent to all departments in search of ideas. Some months went by and a fellow in marketing wanted to present an idea. A couple, really. He met with the execs one day and said “Let’s sell felt. The only people in the market are Bird and JM.” The execs all spoke up and said their entire market share there was new construction! “Only builders buy the felt to keep their projects dry until the roofers come and install the shingles. The roofers are often installing our shingles without felt. And it can’t be used on a re roof. What the heck do we want to sell felt for? The only felt we need is the 12” rag for our shingles. There will never be a need or market for us there. It could open us up to some new liability! And it isn‘t used under tin! Follansbee will void their warranty if they find felt under tin. We can‘t sell it there. There isn’t a roof in the world that requires felt…. How are you planning on selling THAT?” Get out of here with that hair-brained scheme!” “Please! Just give me a minute and you’ll see the logic! Please!” “You have 10 minutes.” “Here’s the deal. Our 15 year shingles regularly last 17-22 years minimum. And our 5 year warranty never needs to be honored, right?” Nods, and “yeses” from the execs. ‘So?” “ We will need to market ourselves as a leader to be envied. Let’s offer a ’7 year’ warranty ’if’ installers use our felt under our shingles! It’s a win-win. The shingles will go the term with or without the felt, but we can open up a whole new market and give glossy brochures to dealers to hand to installers and it only costs us pennies. The installers will do our marketing for us! We’ll always be able to ‘prove’ installation error if any warranty issues ever occur anyway. We can’t lose….It‘s a win-win and we get a larger market share all around.” “Research is showing that anybody less than 50 year old gets caught up in the hype that glossy brochures, TV ads, and radio ads spout. Any glossy ads we print will be taken as gospel. And it’s real easy to brainwash people if we were to do TV ads. Ignorant people soak them up like sponges! Older people tend to take ads with a grain of salt and figure that if it‘s worth being on TV, it‘ll be announced during the news as a news item. They seem to know the difference.” “The established and older roofers will never fall for that line.., but we could give it a try for a limited period of time. It’s your job on the line though!” “No problem Boss. We’ve been looking hard into this and we believe some hard pressed companies will use the ploy to increase their sales. And the newcomers to the roofing industry won’t know any better anyway. We won’t tool up for this, we’ll order from other makers and have our names stamped on the rolls. If this takes off, we’ll see about tooling up to make it ourselves, maybe. Who knows for sure. I do believe we can even make a market for it in the metal roofing side of things. Bill, Bob, myself a couple of others are looking into now.” “Joe and a small team are working on their own time to see if they can come up with some form of sticky felt. They heard a rumor that a company is working on a product that can be used on eaves to help with ice-dam issues. If it’s as good as rumor has it, even jacklegs will be able to do roofs with too many leaks further helping us avoid nay warranty issues. If it has merit, we we can come up with a marketing gimmick for it too.” “Just think ‘underlay’ and we’ll market the term and use it all the time until people start forgetting the roof itself and the underlay becomes the priority. Like I mentioned before, there is plenty up sell potential here and no liability beyond the pennies on the dollar we’re already liable for anyway. How can we lose?” “OK, we’ll also have legal look into all facets before anything goes public! One slip and you’re fired!” “Remember, this will have nothing to do with roof performance, it’s all about marketing! The New buzzword will be ‘Underlay!’ We will be working on selling an underlay for other standard systems like EPDM, TPO, and the like. It’ll be a harder sell, but if they’ll buy the one idea, I believe that in time we can sell them the other.”

I was burned in the 80's by an early lightweight felt replacement that my tile supplier was touting and became gunshy about others. Although I recently gave a bid on a lift-and-relay underlayment replacement and was thinking "why did I ever use this crap", then it hit me. That crap had been on for almost 30 years.

Now, my underlayment of choice is Titanium 50. Any roofer that criticizes that stuff is either stupid-cheap or hasn't tried it. For peel-and-stick I prefer HT versions from either Grace or CT.

I like the good ole fashioned 30 pound felt. Most jack-a- lanterns around here use either 15 pound or none.

Residential roofing has always been about production to some degree but in the last 10 years it has become mostly all about production.

The reason ice/water shield, synthetic underlayments and the like have become more popular lately is because, Contractors are looking for ways to help make up the poor quality of their installations performed mostly by their hispanic "subs".

The thinking is anything they can do to lower the amount of warranty issues.

MAYBE THEY SHOULD CONSIDER HAVING THE ROOFS INSTALLED "PROPERLY" TO BEGIN WITH!

:woohoo:

Eric, another thoughtful post (so what else is new ;) )

My practice is informed by the local conditions. The hardest part for most roofs in our environment, is the late winter/early spring time when the snowfall is ample, the temperature swings between about -10/15C to 0/5C happen almost daily, with consequent melting and refreezing. Under those conditions, ice dams form even on well insulated and well-ventilated roofs. If the appropriate underlayment is not in place under the shingles and the flashings, you will (not may, but will) get water infiltration and leakage.

In response to these conditions, much of the local trade uses Grace I&W as the panacea - stick it on, and the problem is gone. Sure it is. Until it doesn't work, and then everyone scratches their heads and behinds and wonder why the miracle didn't happen this time. As you pointed out, Eric, leaks happen in sidelaps, and in other places, and rarely due to penetration due to nail-holes. Peel and stick membranes do not adhere well to masonry, or metal, and those surfaces need to be primed with roofing cement or similar material to ensure adhesion and water-proof installation. Which most do not bother to do (ick - it's messy! It slows down the "flow"!). So it's not enough to use the right materials, then have to be used in the right way.

When we were doing shingle work our code called for 2 layers of 15# lapped shingle style or 30#, we used 30# and sometimes roofers base sheet 45# on metal 30# fit the scope in certain areas we used what ever the code called for we always chose the better felts, on tile roofing depending on how it was set, mainly 30-90 foam and mortar special nailing for the latest FBC building codes, valleys were treated different by using additional felts and metal ferrous and non ferroius. Our fastening was based on wind loads which ranged fro 100mph to 160mph. Lots of funny rules and regulations here in the sunshine state lol

Very nice to see you showing up here at the old watering hole, pgriz. It's been a long time since I've heard from you on the forum, but not a long time at all since I've thought of you and wondered how you are doing.

This whole underlayment issue has interested me for decades. Here's my present sense of it in a rambling form.

Back in the seventies, I had a signed letter from Certainteed stating that no underlayment was required under their shingles. I was doing tract work at the time and tried it on a couple of houses but the public reaction was far too negative so I immediately dropped it. Tract work has to be bid too tight anyway, so by the early eighties I was done with it anyway. A system without underlayment at all signifies the extreme end of the spectrum.

You are right about all the holes, of course, but, in fact, over the past forty years I have carefully observed that when water does get beneath the primary surface and gets to the underlayment, it generally does not leak through fastener penetration locations. It usually finds a side lap or a gross defect in the underlayment, or dives in at an opening created for a major event like a skylight, mechanical jack, or something of like nature. That is until the fastener heads disintegrate. Then, it is like Mercutio said, "... 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as achurch-door; but 'tis enough,'twill serve."

It is for that reason I want better fasteners. Leaving aside the issue of ice dams, which require special treatment anyway, I have gone back to preferring asphalt felts as underlayments, with some very large exceptions, because they are cheaper and they have very much better traction in cold weather or moist circumstances. #30 for steeper pitches make for a very safe work site. But if they are exposed to chronic moisture, they rot. That's a big deal. Synthetics don't rot. Roofer Select is an asphalt underlayment that gets part of the way there and also doesn't pucker and telegraph much. In the right special circumstances, I use that.

As OS states, synthetics can also handle varying degrees of weather over time, and they don't blow away in high wind. That can be a huge factor. They are longer rolls and lighter rolls, 'tis true, but if standard underlayments are well-made, properly shipped, and properly stored, they net out to me as more manageable to install. I do get tired of bogus claims by manufacturers about "labor savings." Labor savings mean that when all is said and done, the job is clean, right, and timely, and less exhausting. Day in/day out, that is what counts. On a cool day, #15 is great. On a hot day it isn't, especially if it's oily.

My favorite synthetic is Deck Armor. It breathes, it's stronger than hell, it's not nearly as squirmy (time for daddybob to check back in) as the other synthetics. It's pricey and lacks reliable markings for a proper two-ply lay-up. Macroofer once blared that it was the only underlayment he uses which almost enticed me to stop using it myself. But I didn't and it's certainly not the only underlayment I use.

Sometimes you have to use S/A underlayments. OS is right again about covering them to prevent fusion to your primary material. I prefer the Grace Ultra to any of the others, but it's often too expensive for a given project. I like all Grace products with the possible exception of the Plus which I have no occasion to use. But I think there are lots of good S/A membranes now. Most of them have more user-friendly release systems than the Grace does. If I'm using Grace, I usually prime first.

On shakes I still use #30. On tile it varies. A heavier SBS works very well (although in hot weather it'll smoke your hands just touching it during lay-up) and unless it's a low slope or leaf-catching area, or down near perimeters, I don't use S/A. Not only don't, but won't. It's an ugly, gooey, labor intensive mess in the broad field. Totally unnecessary and in my humble opinion a dumb idea. Like Tinner says, it will be long gone in a hundred years anyway. On the other hand, OS posted pics of a tile job he and his boys did that utilized S/A with a synthetic cover. I am more than willing to admit that as steep as the job was, as difficult to get back to after the staging is down, it was more than justified and will be a first-rate back up to the tile for decades. It will also minimize migration of leaks under the underlayment (which is the principal reason that I prime)

One size definitely does not fit all. Choices make it all worthwhile.

Most of the time, we're installing metal (aluminum shingles, metal shingles, vertical panels) with occasional fiberglas asphalt shingles. On eaves, valleys, endwalls and the like we use either Grace I&W or Titanium PSU. On the rest, we install either Titanium UDL-30 or 50. On mansard walls we'll install #15 felt, unless there is prior experience of water infiltration, in which case we'll use either the synthetic underlayment or the membranes. To my mind, the additional cost of the more expensive stuff is peanuts compared to the cost of fixing or re-doing the roof. And most of the time, the customers come to us after being unsatisfied by cheaper attempts. So when it gets to us, it better work.

It depends on how long it is going to be exposed to the weather.

Our required underlayment is 30# rag felt or 2 layers of 15# However we usually up grade the material and use SA SBS we find that this is a suitable item.

50 degrees and morning dew will do the trick just fine. Working from 11:00 to dark is a pleasant day, but we can't always manage to keep it in those parameters. Fuzzyman is a lot more user-friendly.>>>

Don't install when raining. Good Idea for all kinds of roofs>>>

Hello, bit new to the forum:

Are you guys using Titanium UDL 25, 30, or 50?

My other question, is w/ Shingles going up 40% in NY what do you guys now charge a Square?>>>

I use a lot of synthetics. I also use organic felts. Actually I can think of different situations that scream out for different felts. One thing I have to say is that synthetics (not to be confused with peel and stick HDPE film sheets w/modified asphal>>>

I've always admired your intelligence RScape>>>

Thats a good point Kenny Rogers... I mean Macroof. :laugh:

Not to mention it's most desirable factor during installation, it can start pouring during the installation and a synthetic will look at the water and laugh. In all reality, you could leave a h>>>