Roof replacement
In a hot, humid climate the part of a reroof that decides its lifespan is the attic, not the shingle.
A reroof is straightforward work done well or badly. Tear off, inspect the deck, repair it, dry in, redo the details, lay the field, sort the ventilation, clean up. Two to four days on a typical valley house.
What separates a twenty two year roof from a sixteen year roof in this climate is almost entirely in two of those steps: the details, and the ventilation.
Ventilation is the whole ballgame here
An attic in the Brazos Valley in August is an oven with a humidity problem. If it cannot move air, three things happen. The underside of the deck stays hot, which cooks the asphalt above it from beneath and ages the shingle far faster than the sun alone. Moisture that gets into the attic has nowhere to go, so it condenses on the sheathing in the cooler hours and works on it. And your cooling bill reflects all of it.
The system wants balance: intake low at the soffit or eave, exhaust high at the ridge, roughly matched. A great many houses built here in the eighties and nineties have exhaust and almost no intake, often because insulation was later blown in and buried the soffit vents.
That configuration is worse than no ventilation, because a ridge vent with nothing feeding it pulls its air from the path of least resistance, which is the conditioned house below through every gap around a light fitting and a hatch.
A reroof is the moment to fix it, because the roof is open and somebody is already up there. It is not an upsell. If a bid does not mention ventilation at all, that is a question, not a saving.
The details
New pipe boots, every time. The rubber collar around a plumbing vent is the commonest leak in Texas and it costs very little to replace while the roof is open. Reusing them to save fifty dollars is the false economy of the trade.
New flashing at walls and chimneys. Proper step flashing under the courses with counter flashing into the mortar. On older Bryan houses with real masonry chimneys this is the single slowest part of the job and the one most often replaced with a smear of sealant.
Valley metal rather than woven shingles, given how much water a valley moves in a Gulf thunderstorm.
What the contract should name
The shingle by manufacturer, line and wind rating. Whether it is algae resistant, which is worth having here. The underlayment. Ice and water shield or equivalent at valleys and penetrations. New boots and new flashing, stated as new. The ventilation plan, with intake and exhaust both specified. A per sheet decking price. The permit. Workmanship warranty and material warranty, separately, with lengths. And a payment schedule that does not want the whole sum before a shingle moves.
Questions people ask
- What time of year is best?
Late autumn through early spring, for two reasons. Crews are less pressed so you get better attention and better pricing, and a crew working in October is not fighting heat that makes asphalt soft underfoot and miserable to install well.
- Do I need a permit?
Ask the contractor to confirm the requirement for your specific address and to pull it in their own name. Requirements differ between College Station, Bryan and unincorporated Brazos County, and a company working here daily knows which applies to you.
- Can they reroof over the existing shingles?
Sometimes permitted, almost always a poor idea here. It traps heat against the new layer in a climate that already runs hot, it hides decking nobody has inspected, and it doubles the tear off cost next time.