Why I hate roofing!

Back in 1993-23 yrs ago- I installed 35 sq of Prestique Plus and 5 sq of torch down on a house with ridge vents and z-ridge. This was a premium job back then with a 40 yr guarantee. The house had been built in '85 with standard 3-tab and insurance paid for part of this roof. All of the neighbors raved about this roof and the house was the best looking in the entire area. The pitiful thing is that I only got 1 referral but lost the job because I could not get to it soon enough for the anxious homeowner. Since then, I have installed 2 solatubes at different times and had only one problem with a deck nail that had "magically" backed out. The house is still the best looking house in the area.

Last week, the lady of the house called and said the insurance company said they needed a new roof and to get 3 bids. They already had been paid on their claim. I asked who told her to get 3 bids because that is not what is done. Immediately I felt antagonism from her. I said that I needed to look at the roof. I made an appointment and called before I left. I talked to the man of the house and he said all he really wanted was a price because I already knew the house. I said I needed to see the roof and he reluctantly agreed. Normally, I would write these people off as idiots and a waste of time, but on this roof, I had to see for myself what was going on.

I get on the roof and inspected it. There is absolutely no hail damage. Normally, z-ridge will get beat to death by even small hail, but I saw very little damage. I asked to see the adjuster's exactimate. They did not want me to see it. They only wanted a price. They finally showed me the one page that had the roofing totals. The adjuster had totaled the roof, estimated the age at 8 years, and depreciated the payout. Of course, their policy granted recoverable depreciation, but these people did not know that. (The fact is, very few people can decipher those damn exactimates.) He wanted a price, so I said $12,000, just like the adjuster said in the exactimate. (Oh, by the way, the adjuster left off about $4,000 because he adjusted for light weight laminates and didn't pay for the flat roof.) The man said he was only going to pay $9,000 for the roof. If I couldn't do that, he had someone else. I said material alone was going to be at least $6,000. We went back and forth and the guy finally kicked me off his property.

Now there had been catastrophic hail about 6 miles north of this house but they only got hit with a little of it. The storm chasers are everywhere. It is pretty clear that a storm chaser told him he had hail damage and an insurance adjuster paid the claim making several mistakes. It is also pretty clear that he is trying to save his deductible and he had no interest in taking advantage of my help.

I hate storm chasers, insurance companies, insurance adjusters, and stupid people.

Hey natty, did you take shirly's advice and get your roof fixed properly this time? :laugh:

Hello natty, See usually insurance policies cover hail/storm damages. You seem to have bad experiences with your house roofing. One of my friends had the same incident of hail damage, and he wasn't much satisfied with the service his insurance policy provided. He hired an insurance adjuster Boca Raton to review his policy and negotiate with the insurance company to get a fair settlement. I hope you fix your roof properly this time.

Hello natty, See usually insurance policies cover hail/storm damages. You seem to have bad experiences with your house roofing. One of my friends had the same incident of hail damage, and he wasn't much satisfied with the service his insurance policy provided. He hired an insurance adjuster Boca Raton to review his policy and negotiate with the insurance company to get a fair settlement.I hope you fix your roof properly this time.

Similar things happened around here too Vaa, concerning the pricing. First one was the insurance companies coming out with the Exactimate computer program in order to control/reduce pricing which worked for them and still does. Next was the economy crash of 2008/2009. And if those two weren't enough, next we had some very minor and very scattered hail hit our area a couple times. Even though it wasn't really much of a storm, evidently there weren't any other storms in the US at the time because every storm chaser in America was here knocking on doors and offering free roofs. I knew that I would either have to do the same or be left behind. Both door knocking and dealing with insurance companies are my two least favorite things in life, so that is when I became a "repair specialist". I'm not getting rich but at least I get to be the good guy who solves the problems instead of the azzhole who helped to create them. lol

Vaa Fakaosifolau Said: ha thats a good point chuck, I often wonder if I could have got more than I estimated when they agree with no shock reaction.

Especially when they are quick to agree. I've went back to my truck in panic to check my figures, MOST of the time to find out I'm okay. There was that time that I didn't hit x2 on the roof area.

Twill: I swear that I had a reply typed out to you at some point. When I tell folks about something they've not heard, if it's a few hundred more it sells. If it's thousands more, hardly ever. Especially when that plank decking has worked for so long. I keep my mouth shut on that one now.

Sole proprietorship, Corporation, LLC, which ever they are all business models. I'm a business owner just like the owners of any other company. The only difference being the size of the company.

I've had the same experience as Vaa concerning most clients. They appreciate the fact that the owner is also performing the work because "the truly skilled craftsman" is hard to find anymore these days.

It doesn't hurt having over three decades experience with the type of work that you are selling and performing. If the client's eyeballs don't roll back in their head when you give the price, then you probably under bid :laugh:

seen-it-all Said: The lower the slope, the more potential for a leak with the water trapped behind the ridge in the shingles.

I live in an area where there are hundreds of houses built in the 1950s with 2/12 pitches. The original roofs were tar and gravel. All were reroofed with asphalt shingles. Most have now gone with the laminate. I have seen these roofs redone every 7 or 8 years. They keep hiring the same idiots who don't know how to roof these houses. I have roofed about 40 of these houses over the years. They have all lasted their full expected warranty life and the only leaks I have experienced is from the "magical" deck nail that backs out.

The only laminate that I use is the Malarkey because it has the 2" nail area and it is beveled. And I give it only a 5 1/4" exposure instead of the regular 5 5/8".

The biggest problem I have seen with roofing over plank decking is when the nail line coincides with the gap in the planks. If you are just slapping on shingles with a coil nailer as fast as you can like most roofers around here, you are going to end up with nails that don't go into anything which will most definitely leak on these low slopes. I learned a long time ago to mark the gaps and adjust my nail line. And I staple the shingles. Nails are more likely to split the wood.

I haven't seen a problem with wide planks warping unless it is on roofs with poor ventilation and multiple layers of felt. That is why I always strip the deck clean and pull nails- and insist on increasing the ventilation. It seems that I am the only roofer in the area that does that.

But if you really want to do it right over plank decking, I strip the roof clean to the planks then install furring strips and new radiant barrier 1/2" sheathing. I actually was able to convince a couple of clients to go that route.

I have seen IKO, BP and Malarkey all deny warranty claims because of the shingles buckling on wide boards. The problem where I am ( Vancouver Island) is you have about 6 months of high humidity and rain and another 6 months of reasonably dry warm weather. In the winter the boards expand with the humidity and the roofing material has to accommodate this expansion and as a result the shingles form a hump in them. Only certain boards are prone to this malady, usually wide grain wood. The lower the slope, the more potential for a leak with the water trapped behind the ridge in the shingles. "T" locks were not as bad because there was no self sealing strip.

seen-it-all: I've known about that voiding the warranty for a while, but I've never actually seen it cause a problem. Interesting to hear from somebody else who has.

Question: how do you meet warranty requirements for the shingles when roofing over those wide boards? In my neck of the woods those shingles will buckle due to combination of movement of the wide boards and the sealing glue strip on the shingle.

I don't search for repairs but we get a lot of them and I just use them to fill the schedule, and they carry me through winter very well. Chimney's & skylights being the most common. Blow-off's are repeat business. Converting low pitch shingled roofs to a low slope application, usually about 1-3 squares. Oh whats that, didn't caulk the storm collar? All stuff I could handle by myself, but it's probably best that I stop thinking like that and keep training my guys to do work as I would.

Natty, I nick named my work area "cheapo land" because when it comes to replacing roofs here that's all the homeowners want. They falsely assume that every company and every thing about the quotes is the same and the only difference is the price. While most of them are highly intelligent people, they are extremely ignorant when it comes to roofing.

In a way they are right because there is a 90% chance they will get a crew of hispanics no matter which company they hire. Sometimes it will even be the same crew that is "subbing" from several different companies at the same time. And of course the "sub" pay is extremely low so the foreigners just want to do a speedy job in order to make any money. This leads to a host of repair work in the future when these roofs fail. Usually around the detail areas but sometimes simply from being improperly nailed. Then there is the routine maintenance around the 8-10 yr mark.

I find new clients on the internet and get lots of repeat clients and referrals. Doing lots of small jobs and doing them professionally builds a large customer base in a hurry. The reason they call back and hire for more work several times is because they either have older roofs nearing replacement time or they have much newer roofs that were poorly installed.

When I first started specializing in repairs I would look the whole roof over for other issues besides what they called about but 9 times out of 10 when I would mention something else that needs to be done, they seemed to just think I was trying to run up the bill. So I quit doing that and started only attending to the immediate problem at hand which they had called about. Other things reveal themselves later and they call back and hire again.

How are you guys finding all of these "repairs" and then getting repeat customers? The typical repair call around here turns out to be a total disaster which calls for a total roof replacement. And if you are actually repairing the roof, why are you getting call backs?

The picture here shows my last repair for a leak around the skylight. The roof was only about 10 years old but the last 4 roof jobs never were done right. I tore off the shingles and 4 layers of felt and ended up redecking most of the area. Finally, ended up roofing the entire house. Insurance only paid for half the job with no money for redeck.