Residential Roofing in Hunterdon County, NJ

Ranches and split-levels usually have simpler roof geometry — long, relatively shallow planes with few interruptions. The failure points are correspondingly predictable: the eaves, where ice dams form and where drip edge may never have been installed; the plumbing vent boots; and on split-levels, the junction where the lower roof meets the upper wall.

That wall junction deserves attention. It needs step flashing under the siding and, where the roof edge terminates above a gutter, kick-out flashing to direct water into the gutter instead of behind the wall cladding. Missing kick-out flashing is a common cause of rot inside a wall that shows up nowhere on the roof.

A residential roof works as part of an assembly that includes the attic below it. Without balanced intake and exhaust, moisture from the house accumulates in the attic, condenses on the underside of the sheathing in cold weather and shortens the life of both the deck and the shingles above it.

In summer the same lack of airflow drives attic temperatures up, which ages the covering from beneath. A ridge vent alone does not solve this if the soffit intake is blocked by insulation — air has to be able to enter as well as leave.

Hunterdon County's building stock varies more than most New Jersey counties, and that changes how this work is approached from one property to the next. A residential roofing job on a nineteenth-century borough house with plank decking and a steep, dormered roof is a different piece of work from the same job on a 1990s development house or on a barn standing in open farmland.

Exposure varies just as much. Properties on the northern ridges and on open farmland take sustained wind, and damage there starts at the rakes, eaves and ridge. River-corridor and valley properties are shaded and damp, dry slowly after rain, and are where moss and organic growth take hold. We assess the property in front of us rather than applying one approach everywhere.