What if I have a shake roof? What should I replace it with today?

This is another great question. Here are more questions that if you can answer will help your sales person propose the right material for your home:

1. What are your plans for the home? Are you planning to sell soon? If not, how long are you planning on living in this home?

2. Do have Home Owner Association’s CC&R’s (Codes, Covenants and Restrictions) that call for a certain type or quality of shingle or shake?

3. Do you want to go from a shake roof to a shingle roof?

If you can answer these questions you will get a better more precise answer to your questions and your desires.
Most CC&R’s will spell out the type of roof you can have. A number of them have limits to either roofing tiles or shake roofs. These limitations were placed on homes built in the 1970’s 1980’s and 1990’s when asphalt shingles were three tab style and not very appealing. Today, this has changed.

One reason for this change is the quality of the raw cedar has changed a good deal. The high quality shakes that were generally available 30 years ago are still on the market, but they are much more expensive and much harder to find. The current general quality shake is of a much lower standard. Shakes also require more maintenance. Additionally, most real estate inspectors do not understand what makes a good shake roof. So when a sale inspection is necessary they will error on the conservative side and tell you it is time to replace the shakes.

So, what to do? The shakes are almost always on skip sheathing. It is 1” x 6” lumber spaced to accommodate the shake spacing. So, if you remove the shakes you can either replace them with more shakes or you can solid plywood on over the skip sheathing and install an asphalt shingle.
The asphalt shingles today come in many shapes, thickness, colors and warranty options. Many HOA’s now allow a 40 year architectural laminate shingle, such as CertainTeed Presidential in place of the shakes. These are great products. They have been in the marketplace a long time with great results. Several other manufactures such as GAF, Malarkey, Owens Corning and others make similar products.

If you are in the market for a new roof on your home I would recommend calling us first, OF COURSE, but in reality many roofing contractors install these products and they are good quality installers.

These are always tried and true products. Use a trusted contractor who has been in the business for 10 years or more. Most roofing contractors who have been in the industry this long know which products work and which ones don’t! Asking the right questions will guarantee quality results. Good luck.

Isn’t this an interesting subject? We work hard on our company culture. Who we are and what we do. It has taken me a long time to understand what I do and what I say both inside the company and out the company does matter. This should be basic knowledge, but I still work on this stuff. Inside is what I what to talk about.

We have a very good Human Recourses team. We do a pretty good job of hiring the right people. Many of you have read the book Good to Great, about getting the right people on the bus and into the right seat. To help aid in the process the people we hire have had to complete a background check, a drug test, plus we collect and review DMV reports and we check references. This delays us many times in hiring the right people. But, done right, we end up with good long term employees. We generally end up with the right people on the bus.

Once a person is here we train them. We train safety, customer contact skills, communication, respect for others and our customers. The roofing industry does not have the highest level of expectations. The culture training is making sure that all employees understand who we are and why we act the way we do.
Every day we must produce our best game. Whether it is the first day employee with a broom in their hand or a project manager who is making financial recommendations to a long term property owner, we must do each step correctly.
So, our next step is entering into a scientific study of our company culture. We are surveying about 50% of our staff to see what they believe via a confidential survey. This survey will tell us where we are doing well and where we are not in terms of company culture. It will compare us to over 8,000 companies worldwide in all kinds of industries to see if we are truly getting our message out to our employees, to our customers and most important are we “walking the walk”?

Keep your comments coming back, both good and constructive and we will keep you posted on the survey, both good and constructive.

Thanks all.
Mark Carpenter, President