Roof Replacement in Crown Point, IN
A roof replacement is one day of noise and twenty-odd years of not thinking about it. What decides which end of that range you get is almost entirely what happens once the old roof is off.
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Everything comes off first
We tear off. Always, on every house, even where the code would permit a second layer over the first. There are three reasons and none of them is about selling more work.
You cannot inspect a deck you have covered up. Soft sheathing, delaminated plywood and the rot that collects around an old leak are only findable with the shingles gone, and they are precisely the things that will fail under your new roof. Second, a layover traps heat in the old shingles and cooks the new ones from below, so the roof you just paid for ages faster than it should. Third, shingles laid over an uneven surface telegraph every ridge and cupped course underneath them, and they never seal down flat.
It is also simply how Crown Point Roofing Company would want it done on our own houses. A roof is not a place to save a fraction of one job at the cost of the next twenty years.
What goes back on, from the deck up
A roof is an assembly, not a covering. Most of what keeps water out of a house in a Northwest Indiana winter is underneath the part you can see from the street.
- The deck. Walked, sounded and inspected from the attic as well as from above. Anything soft comes out. On older houses with plank decking rather than sheet goods, wide gaps between boards mean fasteners with nothing to bite, and those sections need sheathing over.
- Ice barrier at the eaves. A self-adhering membrane running from the roof edge up past the line of the exterior wall, so that when meltwater backs up behind an ice dam it meets a sealed surface rather than a lapped one. In this climate it is not optional and the code says so.
- Underlayment over the rest. A secondary water barrier across the whole deck, and the thing standing between your ceilings and the weather on the day a shingle goes missing.
- Drip edge and valley protection. Metal at every eave and rake to carry water into the gutter instead of behind it, and membrane down every valley before the metal or the woven shingles go in.
- New flashing everywhere it matters. Step flashing at walls and chimneys, new boots on every plumbing vent, new vent hoods. Re-using old flashing to save a small sum is how a brand-new roof leaks in its first spring.
- Shingles, laid to the pattern the maker specifies. Nail count, nail placement and offset are not details — they are the wind rating, and they are the first thing a manufacturer looks at if a claim is ever made against the material.
- Ventilation, balanced. Exhaust at the ridge and intake at the soffits, sized against each other. Exhaust alone does not ventilate an attic.
The parts the code specifies, and the parts that get skipped
Most of a roof is left to the manufacturer's instructions. A handful of things are written into the code itself, and they are the components that cost time rather than material — which is exactly why they are the ones that quietly go missing when a job is being run to the bone. All of these are checkable against your own house.
| Component | What the code actually says | How it goes wrong |
|---|---|---|
| Ice barrier (R905.1.2) | In counties designated in Table R301.2(1) — Lake County is one — either two layers of underlayment cemented together or a self-adhering polymer-modified bitumen sheet, running from the lowest edge of every roof surface to a point not less than 24 inches inside the exterior wall line. On a slope of 8:12 or steeper, not less than 36 inches measured along the slope from the eave. | One course of membrane laid along the gutter line and stopped there. On a house with a deep overhang that can finish outside the wall line entirely, which leaves the membrane protecting the soffit and nothing else. |
| Drip edge (R905.2.8.5) | Required at eaves and rakes. Segments lapped at least 2 inches. Extends at least ¼ inch below the sheathing and at least 2 inches back up onto the deck. Fastened at not more than 12 inches on centre. | Left off the rakes, or fastened too far apart so the wind works it loose. Rake edge is where our westerlies get under a roof first. |
| Order of the two | Underlayment goes over the drip edge along the eaves, and under it along the rakes. | Reversed. It looks identical from the ground and it hands water behind the fascia instead of into the gutter. |
| Manufacturer's instructions (R903.1, R904.1, R905.1) | Roof assemblies must be installed in accordance with the approved manufacturer's installation instructions, on top of everything else in the chapter. | Nail count and nail placement. This is the wind rating on the wrapper, and it is the first thing a manufacturer looks at if a material claim is ever made. |
Source: 2020 Indiana Residential Code (675 IAC 14-4.4, adopting and amending the 2018 IRC), sections R903.1, R904.1, R905.1, R905.1.2 and R905.2.8.5, and Table R301.2(1) as amended at 675 IAC 14-4.4-5. The code is in force statewide whether or not a local building authority exists in a given jurisdiction.
None of this is exotic and none of it is expensive in materials. It is an hour or two of somebody's care at the edge of a roof, and it is most of the difference between a roof that lasts its life and one that starts leaking at an eave in its fourth winter. Ask any roofer quoting your house how far up the ice barrier goes. The answer should be a measurement.
The attic is half the job
A roof that cooks in August and grows ice dams in January is usually failing for reasons that have nothing to do with the shingles. It is the space underneath them.
Air leaks from the heated house into the attic — around light fittings, at the top plates of interior walls, through the hatch — and carry warmth up onto the underside of the deck. In winter that warmth melts the snow lying on the roof from below. The melt runs down the slope until it reaches the eaves, which overhang the house and are therefore properly cold, and there it freezes. The ridge of ice that builds up holds the next lot of meltwater against the roof, and water standing on a shingle roof gets in. That is an ice dam, start to finish, and no shingle prevents it.
In summer the same poor ventilation runs attic temperatures far above the outside air, bakes the shingles from underneath, and puts your air conditioning to work against a hot ceiling.
So when a roof comes off, we look at what the deck can tell us: rusted nail points, dark staining, insulation stopped short of the eaves, soffit vents buried under it, a bathroom fan ducted to nowhere. You get told what we find, whether or not it is work we are being paid to do.
Choosing what to put back
Most houses in this county get an architectural asphalt shingle, and for good reasons — it handles our temperature swings, it is repairable by anybody, and the material is stocked locally. There are cases for the alternatives, though, and they are worth hearing before you decide by default.
Architectural asphalt
The sensible default. Heavier and better wind-rated than the old three-tab, laid in a staggered pattern that hides deck irregularities, and available in colours that do not date. Its service life here depends far more on ventilation than on which brand you buy.
Impact-rated shingle
A tougher mat built to survive hail rather than record it. Worth a conversation if you are in a part of the county that has been hit more than once, and worth asking your insurer about before you choose — some treat it differently on premium.
Standing-seam metal
Sheds snow, lasts a very long time, and is the strongest answer on low slopes where shingles are marginal. Costs considerably more up front, needs a roofer who works in metal regularly, and changes the look of a house permanently.
Membrane for the flat sections
Porch roofs, additions and dormer tops with little or no pitch are not shingle territory at all. They take a single-ply or modified-bitumen membrane, and a roof with both needs both done properly where they meet.
How the day itself goes
Worth knowing in advance, because a re-roof is more disruptive than people expect and almost all of it is manageable if you are expecting it.
Before we start
Move the cars out, take anything breakable off the walls in upstairs rooms, and cover what is stored in the attic. Tear-off shakes a house and fine debris comes through the deck.
Protection goes down
Tarps over the beds and shrubs against the house, plywood against the siding where debris will land, and the drive kept clear for the dumpster.
Strip in sections
We take off only what we can get back to weather-tight before we stop for the night. That is why the roof does not come off all at once even on a clear morning.
Deck inspection, with you if you want
This is the only moment anyone will ever see your sheathing. If boards need replacing you are shown them and told the cost before they are cut out.
Dry in, then finish
Ice barrier, underlayment, flashings, then the shingles and the ridge. The house is protected from the moment the underlayment is down, not from the moment the last shingle goes on.
Clean-up and the walk round
Magnet over the lawn, the beds and the drive, more than once. Then round the house together, at ground level, looking at what was done.
Frequently asked questions
How do I know it is time to replace rather than repair?
The clearest signals are shingles that snap instead of flexing, granule loss across whole slopes rather than in patches, several separate leaks in a season, or two layers already up there. Age on its own decides nothing — we have condemned fourteen-year-old roofs and repaired twenty-five-year-old ones.
Do you replace the gutters at the same time?
Often it makes sense to, because the drip edge, the fascia and the gutter all meet at the same edge and it is the one time everything there is accessible. It is a separate decision and a separate price, not something we fold in without asking.
Will my landscaping survive?
Beds and shrubs against the house get covered and, where they are right under a slope, plywood leaned over them. Tear-off debris falls hard and an unprotected hydrangea does not enjoy it. Tell us what you care about before we start rather than after.
What about the noise?
Tear-off is genuinely loud and it carries through the whole house — it is steel scrapers on decking directly above your ceilings. If somebody works nights, an infant naps, or a dog panics, plan to be elsewhere for the day. We would rather you knew.
Do you pull a permit?
Roof replacement is permitted work in most jurisdictions around here and we handle that where it applies. The requirement and the inspection are the municipality's, not ours, and we would rather do it properly than have it surface when you sell the house.
What happens to the old roof?
Into a covered trailer or a dumpster and away to a proper disposal facility. Asphalt shingles are recyclable in this region and are handled that way where the facility takes them.