Roofing across southwest Florida

A free connecting service linking homeowners with local roofing providers across Lee, Collier and Charlotte counties. What follows is what the sun, the salt and a house that sits empty half the year do to a roof here.

A roof here rarely gives out in the field. It gives out where the water is told to leave. Six places a roof gives way here. The one everyone looks at is No. 2, the covering. On a tile roof the layer beneath it decides the outcome.

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1 The ridge. The highest, hottest course, and the one the sun works on all day.
2 The field. Tile or shingle above, and the underlayment that actually keeps water out below.
3 Valleys. One channel carrying what two slopes shed, at the pace this coast rains.
4 Flashing. Where the lanai and the enclosure meet the house, and where neither trade owns the seam.
5 Penetrations. Every vent and curb is a hole the underlayment has to seal, and the first place it stops.
6 Eaves and metal. Drip edge and fasteners, which salt air reaches years before it touches the covering.

A roof almost never fails where you look

It fails where it meets something else, and it fails in a layer you cannot see. Concrete tile can look untouched for decades while the underlayment beneath it reaches the end of its life, and on the water a roof can come apart entirely at its metal while the covering above still reads as new from the street. The first useful question about a leak here is not what is on top, but what is under it and what it runs into.

The work

Eight places, three counties

From the canal grid of Cape Coral to the gated tile of Estero and the historic frame houses of Punta Gorda: eight markets under the same sun and the same daily summer rain, each ageing on its own terms. A good part of this housing was covered within a few years of itself, which means whole streets are arriving at the same decision together.