Pawtuxet Roofing

Roofing contractors in Providence and Kent

A good share of these roofs sit over somebody else's heating bill. That gap, between who pays for the warmth and who owns the roof, ends up written in the shingles.

Five lines that make two quotes comparable here

  • The sheathing. Solid, or boards laid with gaps? Pre-war housing here is usually the second, and a modern covering needs a continuous surface. Ask the per-sheet rate before the roof is opened.
  • The rear roof. Behind almost every steep front slope sits a much shallower section. It is a separate roof with separate materials, and it is where the leaks usually are.
  • The gap between houses. On the tight lots here the eaves nearly touch, and the crew works one side from a ladder it cannot set square. That junction belongs in the hours, not in the surprise.
  • The chimneys. Often two, and often carrying nothing any more. Flashing let into the brick outlives the covering; sealed to the face of it does not.
  • Access. Narrow street, hillside lot, no side yard. Where the container goes and how the crew reaches the back decides real hours, and it belongs in the price rather than in the surprise.
A three-family roof takes its orders from the apartments below it. It gives out where the heat gets out. Six places, numbered. Only one of them is the covering you can see from the street.
Rear ell Point 1: the ridge 1 Point 2: the field of the covering 2 Point 3: the valleys 3 Point 4: flashing at the chimney 4 Point 5: a penetration 5 Point 6: the overhang 6
  1. 1 The ridge. One ridge over two households, and one of them pays to replace it.
  2. 2 The field. The part everyone looks at, and rarely the part that actually failed.
  3. 3 Valleys. Most of them were cut in later, when the house was divided into flats.
  4. 4 The chimney. Often two of them, and often neither one carries anything any more.
  5. 5 Penetrations. Two kitchens and two bathrooms mean twice the holes on the same roof.
  6. 6 The overhang. Where heat from a flat you do not control comes back down as ice.

The work

Why roofs fail in this region

The housing here is two- and three-family, detached, close together, and heated by people who do not own the roof. That one fact sits behind most of the six causes on this site: the tenant's heat, the vent that has nothing feeding it, the chimney nobody uses any more, and twice the penetrations of a single-family house. The rest is age, and the habit of laying a new roof over an old one.

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