Roof replacement
A Puget Sound roof does not wear out the way the wrapper predicts. It stays wet eight months a year, grows moss on its shaded slopes, and dies at the edges first. Replacing one properly means pricing that reality, and knowing what a complete quote includes is how you compare two bids that look nothing alike.
When replacement is the right call
The reliable signals are age, edges and slopes together. A covering past its mid-teens here has earned attention even if nothing leaks. Edges tell the truth before the field does: softened eaves, granule-bare bottom courses and stained fascia mean the roof has been finishing its life from the outside in. And the shaded slope is the honest one, a roof can look serviceable from the sunny side of the street while its north face carries an established moss mat and lifted courses.
On the region’s plat-era housing, the street is also a signal. Coverings installed the same season age on the same clock, so when neighboring roofs of the same vintage start turning over, a roof of that age is worth evaluating even if it has not leaked. Choosing the timing yourself is consistently cheaper than having it chosen for you by a ceiling stain in February.
What a complete quote includes
Tear-off and disposal: how many existing layers come off, and where they go; code allows at most two, so a roof recovered once must be stripped entirely this time. Decking: priced per sheet, because on this housing the number of soft sheets is genuinely unknown until the covering is off, and on pre-war stock that started life under cedar, spaced sheathing may need sheeting over besides.
Valley metal: on roofs that have carried needle loads for decades, valleys are the most frequent surprise line, and a quote should say whether theirs assumes replacement. Edge work: drip edge on every eave and rake, and a per-foot price for the fascia and deck-edge work this climate makes likely. New flashing rather than reused at chimneys and walls. And ventilation, intake at the eaves, exhaust at the ridge, which in this climate decides whether the new covering dries from below or quietly rots like its predecessor.
The spread between two honest quotes usually lives in three places: the decking allowance, the edge and valley scope, and what is being reused versus replaced at the flashings. Asking each bidder those three questions puts every number on the same footing.
The Puget Sound factor
Two climate facts shape every roof decision here. First, the wet season: roughly October through May the roof rarely dries, which is why moss establishes, why edges rot, and why the region’s coverings age from their shaded slopes inward rather than evenly.
Second, the short dry season: replacement work concentrates into July through September, and the calendar fills from the middle out, quotes gathered in spring get more contractor attention and better scheduling than quotes requested at the peak. A third, quieter fact belongs in the decision too: the attic. An under-vented attic in this climate shortens a new roof’s life from below, and replacement day is the cheap moment to fix it.
Questions that separate two quotes on the same house
- Is this a strip or a recover, and how many layers are up there?
- Two layers is the code maximum, and a great deal of Sound-area housing was recovered once in the 1980s or 1990s, which makes this replacement a full strip. Wet layers are also heavier to haul, so the disposal line moves with the answer.
- Is there a stated price per sheet for soft sheathing?
- On a roof that has spent decades damp, soft sheathing is common enough that a quote without a per-sheet rate is incomplete. Getting the rate in advance keeps the discovery from turning into a negotiation once the deck is open.
- Does the bid price new valley metal, or assume the old metal stays?
- Valleys under conifers carry a needle mat most of the year, and the metal beneath corrodes long before the field wears out. It is the most frequent surprise line in a local quote, so it is worth settling before the work starts.
- What is priced at the eave: drip edge, fascia, soft deck?
- Roofs here finish at their edges rather than in the middle: gutter overflow soaks the fascia, moss holds water on the bottom courses, and the first inches of deck go soft. Ask for a per-foot price so the work is priced rather than discovered.
- Is new flashing going in at every wall and chimney?
- Sealant ages fastest where it stays damp, and in this climate a joint under moss or needle litter is damp from October to May. Reused flashing with a fresh bead of caulk is the shortcut that shows up as a leak in the first wet season.
- Does the quote name the intake and the exhaust separately?
- Intake at the eaves and exhaust at the ridge, balanced to each other. In a maritime winter the attic has to carry out the moisture of daily life, and an unbalanced system condenses it on the underside of the deck instead.
- 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.