Which parts of the roof are near the end, and which have years left

The pieces of a roof age at different rates, and on a house that has carried forty winters of snow some of them are far older than the shingle suggests. Enter when the house was built and what has been replaced since, and it will show which parts are due for attention and which are not.

This tells you where to look. It does not tell you what is wrong. It compares ages to the service lives roofers generally expect. In this climate a roof over a cold, well-vented attic can outlast the range, and one that grows an ice dam every February can fall well short of it. Exposure and installation outweigh the calendar.

This runs on your own screen and nowhere else. Nothing is submitted and nothing is saved.

Give it the house, then what has been done

When was the house built? What is on the roof now?

What has already been replaced?

Leave a row at Original if that part has never been replaced, or if a previous owner may have done it and there is no record. Not knowing is a normal answer on a house this age.

Roof covering Flashing at walls, valleys and penetrations Underlayment and ice-and-water shield Gutters and downspouts Attic ventilation Skylights (if you have them) Chimney crown, cap and masonry (if you have them) Fascia and soffit Siding or exterior cladding Window seals

Snow does not test a roof evenly. It leans hardest on the eave, the valley and the chimney. Which is why flashing, not shingle, is the item most worth knowing the age of.

Tap to enlarge

1 Ridge caps. Thin, exposed, and worked loose by a winter of freezing and thawing.
2 The field. One layer or two, and the answer changes what a tear-off costs.
3 Valleys. Leaves mat where two slopes drain as one, and snow sits on top of them.
4 Flashing. Old masonry chimneys, and the saddle behind them that should shed snow.
5 The vent boot. A collar that goes brittle in the cold and splits without warning.
6 Eaves and ice dams. Where escaping attic heat melts snow that refreezes at the edge.

Why the newest shingle can be the youngest part of an old roof

A roof laid over the previous one keeps the old underlayment underneath both. The surface is new; the membrane that actually stops meltwater is whatever was there before, and on many of these houses that is original. This is why the page asks about underlayment on its own line, and why the honest answer is often that no one knows when the deck was last exposed.

Flashing follows the same rule. Sealing the metal at the chimney and the wall junctions is quicker than replacing it, and it is done often enough that a roof from five years ago can be carrying flashing from the seventies. Behind a chimney that holds snow for weeks, that is the part to ask about first.

Use this page

Copy this or link to it as you wish, crediting metacometroofing.com. If it helps someone in one of these towns tell a roof that needs flashing from a roof that needs replacing, it has earned its place.

Quotes already on the table? The quote comparison puts up to three of them next to each other, row by row.