As a Licensed Builder and all-round roofing guru, Greg Catton from My Home Improvements has quoted on countless roof restoration jobs all over Brisbane and Queensland.
He knows from experience that while a roof can look to be in good shape from ground level, it can be a totally different story once you actually get up on the roof and start poking around.
Relying on the age of a roof can also be very deceiving in determining its condition.
In this article, Greg explains the importance of ensuring a roofing contractor conducts a thorough inspection in order to properly quote a roof restoration job.
Here’s a scenario
A little while ago I was called out to do a quote on a roof restoration job for a property in Carindale. I knew the roof had cement tiles and was around 15 years old.
Because of its age, I assumed the tiles on this roof, especially the ridge capping, would be in a reasonable state.
But once I actually got up to do an inspection, I nearly fell of the damn roof.
The cement bedding under the ridge caps was like the Kalahari Desert when you put it in your hands. As you can see in the image below, the ridge caps were effectively sitting on the roof unattached and completely useless.
For a 15-year-old roof, this simply should NOT have been the case.
What had happened was that the ridge caps were never locked down properly on the roof in the first place.
The importance of ridge caps
Ridge caps are made from cement in an inverted V shape and are placed down along where roof planes meet an angle. They are incredibly important as they secure down roof tiles on the top layers of the tiles.
In the “old days”, I’m talking pre-1990 here, contractors used cement to secure or “point” ridge caps. However, gradually it was realised that using cement alone wasn’t entirely effective. With house movement, cement cracks easily, so it did not give much security to the tiles
To prevent this, the industry started using a product called Flexi-Point to point ridge caps instead of cement.
Flexi-Point is made from water based polymers and fillers and is intended to ‘feel’ like normal cement mortar. It differs from traditional and inherently brittle cement mortar pointing in that it retains a significant post cure flexibility. This enables it to flex in harmony with roof movements without cracking or breaking away.
Use of Flexi-Point has been adopted as a standard in the Australian roofing industry since the mid 1990s.
But apparently the contractor who built the roof at this Carindale property never got that memo!
Luckily for this customer, we were able to properly quote for his roof restoration after a thorough inspection. Our quote included steps to re-bed and re-point the ridge caps using Flexi-Point and set things up properly for a long lasting, beautiful tile restoration job.
So the moral of this story is this…
Always ensure a roofing contractor actually gets up on your roof before they give you a roof restoration quote.
A thorough inspection conducted by a licenced roofing contractor is the only way to identify potential problems such as loose or broken tiles, water damage, lichens, damaged ridge caps and much more.
You simply can not diagnose problems with a roof by looking at it from the ground or assuming what condition it is based on the age of the roof.
A professional roofing contractor will take lots of photos of your roof to show you any problems they’ve found
What happens if a roofing contractor doesn’t get up on the roof to quote?
Unfortunately, there are shonky contractors out there who sometimes don’t bother to get up on your roof to do a quote. Obviously they can’t properly identify potential problems to quote on if they are just relying on how old the roof is or viewing the roof from the ground.
One of two things might happen once they get up on your roof to start work after they’ve quoted you:
- They will just ignore or cover up any problems they didn’t identify in the first place — leaving you with a poorly done job and disappointment.
- They will try to charge you more than what they quoted for to fix the issues they didn’t know about — a difficult position for you to be in once the job has started.
Want to make sure your roof restoration is quoted properly. Talk to us!
My Home Improvements have 20 years’ experience as roofing contractors. We’re experts at both tile roof restorations and metal roof restorations.
We always conduct a thorough inspection prior to quoting work and will happily provide an obligation free assessment at your property so you know exactly where you stand and can feel confident about the quality of work being done.
If you would like more information about roof restorations or roofing work in general, My Home Improvements will be happy to help. Simply click here to contact us.
