Roofing contractors in the Carolina Piedmont
Two things work on a roof here: what grows on it and what falls on it. Both end up in the valleys, and both cost less to deal with before they are obvious.
What to ask the second bidder
You will get two prices and they will not be for the same job. The gap is almost never the shingle. It is whether anyone has priced new flashing or planned to tidy up what is already there, and whether anyone has said out loud what happens if the boards under the valleys are soft.
Valleys deserve their own question here. Pine litter collects in them and holds water against the covering, so the deck underneath goes before anything else on the roof does. Ask what a sheet costs and how many the quote assumes. A rate you can hold someone to beats a number that moves on the morning of the work.
One more, and it costs nothing to ask: what happens at the edge. Gutters and drip edge get treated as trim, but that is where water is supposed to leave the roof, and a re-roof that stops short of them has left the last few inches to luck.
- 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.
The work
Why roofs fail in this region
The Piedmont built out in waves, so whole phases reach the end of a first roof within a season or two of each other. Five hot months a year bake the covering from above and (in an under-vented attic) from below, humidity streaks every shaded slope with algae, and the pines load the valleys and gutters. Most of what gets reported here is predictable.