Roof replacement
This region has the oldest housing of any market we cover, and that single fact shapes every quote. What is under the covering: how many layers, what kind of sheathing, what previous crews left behind: matters more here than the shingle going on top, and it is the part a thin estimate leaves unpriced.
When replacement is the right call
On composition roofs the signals are the usual ones: granule loss across the field, curled or brittle edges, ridge caps working loose, and a covering past its late teens. On the older stock the questions are different. A slate roof shedding the occasional slate usually needs a repair; one shedding them steadily, with stone that flakes when handled, is finished. And on an attached house, recurring stains on an upstairs wall point at the party-wall flashing rather than the field, a different diagnosis with a different fix.
On the plat-built suburbs, the street is also a signal. Whole developments were roofed within a season or two of each other, so when neighboring homes of the same vintage start turning over, a roof of that age deserves an evaluation even if nothing has leaked.
What a complete quote includes
Tear-off and disposal: how many layers come off; code allows two, and on sixty-year-old suburban stock a third layer is a common find. Decking, priced per sheet: on anything that started life under slate, expect original spaced sheathing that must be sheeted over before modern shingle can be nailed to it, and make sure the quote says how that is handled.
New flashing at chimneys: step and counter-flashing, the latter cut into the mortar rather than caulked to the brick face. On attached homes, the party-wall tie-in, named explicitly. On anything with a porch, the low-slope section with its own material specified. And attic ventilation, which on houses built before it was standard practice usually means creating intake and exhaust that never existed.
The spread between two honest quotes lives almost entirely in that list: decking, porch, party wall, chimney, ventilation. Asking each bidder to price those five explicitly puts every number on the same footing.
The Philadelphia factor
Three things make this market its own. First, age: a housing stock that runs from eighteenth-century stone through interwar rows to postwar plats means no single estimating rule applies, and a quote produced without walking the roof is a guess. Second, attachment: on a row or twin the covering runs to the neighbor, which changes staging, flashing and even the timing of the decision.
Third, the trees: mature canopy over most of these towns puts a leaf load in every valley each autumn, and valley metal is the most frequent surprise line in a local estimate. The working season is long, March into December, but the specialist trades for old roofs are a small pool and book months ahead, so winter is when the good work gets scheduled.
Questions that separate two quotes on the same house
- How many layers is the estimator expecting to remove?
- Code allows two, and on sixty-year-old suburban stock a third is a regular find, which turns a recover into a full strip and moves both the labor and the disposal line. Get the count the estimator observed on the roof, not the one assumed from the street.
- What is the per-sheet decking price, and what if the sheathing is spaced?
- Two separate answers. The per-sheet rate covers soft boards; the second covers the local wildcard, because anything roofed in slate a century ago sits on gapped boards that modern shingle cannot be nailed to. Sheeting over them is real material and labor, and a quote that never mentions it has either not looked or is planning to raise the price mid-job.
- Is the porch or low-slope section included, and in what material?
- A porch roof is a separate assembly on its own clock, and it needs a membrane rather than shingle. Leaving it out is the most commonly omitted line in a quote around here, and it is also the section most likely to be leaking already.
- On an attached house: how does the new roof tie into the neighbor’s?
- On a row or a twin the covering runs to a party wall, and the junction has to be flashed rather than simply stopped. It changes staging, sequencing and sometimes the timing of the decision, so it belongs in the written scope rather than being settled on the day.
- Is chimney counter-flashing being cut into the mortar or caulked to the face?
- Cut into the mortar is the durable method; caulked to the brick face is the fast one, and it fails within a few freeze-thaw seasons. On this housing stock, chimney work is where more leaks originate than anywhere else on the roof.
- Does this house have attic ventilation today, and what is being added?
- On a pre-1960 house the honest answer is often that both have to be created rather than corrected, because the roof was built before attic ventilation was standard. Hot humid summers cook a covering from beneath when nothing moves air under the deck.
- 1 Ridge caps. Thin, fully exposed, and usually the first course to let go.
- 2 The field. Slate on the older rows, shingle on the rest, each on its own clock.
- 3 Valleys. Two slopes emptying through one line, with litter holding the water there.
- 4 Flashing. Old masonry, and the party wall a rowhouse shares with the house next door.
- 5 The vent boot. A small rubber part with a far shorter life than the roof it sits in.
- 6 Eaves. Where the porch roof ties into the wall, and where backed-up water gets in.