What on your roof is due, and what has years left

The parts of a roof age on different schedules, and under pines the valleys age fastest of all. Enter when the house was built and what has been replaced, and it will show where each part stands, which on a subdivision roof is rarely where the neighbors think.

This tells you where to look. It does not tell you what you will find. It sets ages against the service lives the trade generally expects. In the Piedmont a roof on a sunny lot with no trees over it can outlast the range; one under pines with algae on the north slope can fall well short of it. Shade and litter count for more than the year.

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Enter the house, then mark what has been replaced

When was the house built? What is on the roof now?

What has already been replaced?

Leave a row on Original if that part was never replaced, or if a previous owner may have done it and nothing came with the house. On a subdivision roof, not knowing is common.

Roof covering Flashing at walls, valleys and penetrations Underlayment and eave membrane Gutters and downspouts Attic ventilation Skylights (if you have them) Chimney crown, cap and masonry (if you have them) Fascia and soffit Siding or exterior cladding Window seals

A roof seldom fails out in the open. It fails where two things meet. Which is why flashing, not shingle, is the item most worth knowing the age of.

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1 Ridge caps. Thin, hot, and the first course to loosen on a Piedmont summer roof.
2 The field. Streaks first, then real age. The two are not the same problem.
3 Valleys. Pine straw mats where two slopes drain as one, and holds the water there.
4 Flashing. The chimney, and the line where the garage roof meets the wall.
5 The vent boot. Usually cracked by its teens, long before the field around it is.
6 Eaves. Where gutter overflow lands, and where the fascia goes soft first.

Why the shingle date is not the valley date

When a roof is laid over the previous one, the surface is new and the underlayment beneath it is whatever was there. In the valleys, where the deck has been damp for years, that matters most. The visible part resets; the working part does not. That is why this page asks about underlayment on its own line, and why on many houses the honest answer is that no one knows when the deck was last exposed.

Flashing works the same way. Sealing the old metal at the chimney and the walls is faster than replacing it, and it happens often enough that a roof from five years ago can be relying on flashing from the eighties. If someone says the roof is recent, ask about the valleys and the chimney.

Use this page

Copy or link to this freely, crediting longleafroofing.com. If it helps someone in Gastonia or Fuquay-Varina tell a valley problem from a roof problem, it has done what it is for.

Quotes already in hand? The comparison checklist lines up three of them, row by row.