What on your roof has quietly reached the end, and what has not

The parts of a roof age on different schedules, and here the slow ones matter most: the fascia that has been damp for a decade, the deck that has been condensing on since the house was built. Enter when the house went up and what has been replaced, and it will show where each part stands.

This tells you where to look. It does not tell you what you will find. It sets ages against the service lives the trade generally expects. Around the Sound a roof on a sunny slope with no trees over it can outlast the range; one under moss on the north side can rot from the edge in well under it. Shade and drainage count for more than the year.

This runs on your own screen. Nothing is sent and nothing is stored.

Enter the house, then mark what has been done

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

What has already been replaced?

Leave a row on Original if that part has never been replaced, or if a previous owner may have done it and nothing came with the house. On a roof under trees, not knowing is the usual case.

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

A roof here rarely dies in the middle. It dies at the edges and in the shade. Which is why flashing, not shingle, is the item most worth knowing the age of.

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1 Ridge caps. The first pieces to lift, and the ones the weather gets underneath.
2 The field. Moss on the damp slopes holds water where the covering wants to dry.
3 Valleys. Needles mat where two slopes drain as one, and stay wet for months.
4 Flashing. The chimney, and where an addition meets the original roof.
5 The vent boot. Rubber perishes quietly under a canopy that never lets it dry out.
6 Eaves. The last part of the roof to dry, and the first to go soft.

Why a dry-looking shingle can sit on a wet roof

When a roof is laid over the previous one, the surface is new and the underlayment beneath it is whatever was there. Under a shingle laid over shake that may be nothing at all. The visible part resets; the working part does not. That is why this page asks about underlayment on its own line, and why on many houses here the honest answer is that no one knows when the deck was last seen dry.

Flashing follows the same rule, with a twist: here it fails behind the siding, where water has been running down the wall for years before a stain shows. Sealing the old metal is faster than replacing it, and it happens often enough that a roof from five years ago can be relying on flashing from the seventies. If someone says the roof is recent, ask about the walls.

Use this page

Copy or link to this freely, crediting salishroofing.com. If it helps someone in Tacoma or Marysville catch a soft fascia before the question becomes carpentry, it has done what it is for.

Holding quotes already? The comparison checklist sets up to three of them side by side, row by row.