Roofing Materials & Supplies

That steady drip-drip-drip landing on your hardwood floors during a January thaw isn’t always a hole in your shingles. Most homeowners—and frankly, too many greenhorn local roofers—climb up there looking for a puncture, but they’re looking at the wrong culprit. I’ve spent twenty-five years crawling into 140-degree attics and freezing crawlspaces, and I can tell … Read more

The Material Truth: Why Your Flat Roof Seams are Failing You’re standing on a blinding white expanse in the middle of July. In places like Phoenix or San Antonio, that TPO membrane is cooking at 150°F. You’ve hired local roofers to install a system that’s supposed to reflect the sun and keep your cooling costs … Read more

The Myth of the Maintenance-Free Flat Roof Every week, I get a call from a building owner in the Upper Midwest who is staring at a brown stain on their ceiling, wondering why their ‘new’ roof is acting like a sieve. They were sold a bill of goods on a single-ply membrane that was installed … Read more

The Myth of the 30-Year Shingle Ask any local roofer who has been around longer than a season, and they will tell you the same thing: shingles are just the show. They are the decorative armor. The real battle against gravity and physics happens in the half-inch of space between the shingle and the plywood … Read more

You smell it before you see it. That damp, heavy scent of wet newspaper and stagnant air. I was standing in a cramped attic in Minneapolis last February, my knees sinking into eight inches of blown-in fiberglass that felt more like a wet sponge than insulation. The homeowner was complaining about a leak in the … Read more

The Forensic Autopsy of a Failed Attic: Why Your Vents are Leaking Heat and Cash Step onto a roof in the high desert of Arizona or the sun-baked suburbs of Texas in July, and you’ll smell it before you see it: that cloying, dusty scent of fiberglass insulation baking at 150°F. It’s the smell of … Read more