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Replacing A Historical Roof With Accuracy

Restoring a historical home is a time-consuming process. It isn’t just finding reliable contractors, either; it’s also researching the history of your home so you can do the house justice in your restorations. If you’re in the middle of restoring a historical home and the roof is in desperate need of repair or replacement, don’t jump to just any contractor. Find a Middletown roofing company that’s willing to work to your specifications to protect the historical integrity of your home.

Most historical roofing materials are still produced to this day. Some clay tile manufacturers have been around for decades, so it’s possible to find the company who made your roof’s tiles in the 1920s and replace them with identical materials. If the company is no longer in business, it’s sometimes possible to find salvaged materials that match the items needing replacement. There are also companies that custom make tiles and shingles to match historic ones.

It’s much harder to mimic the installation practices performed when the roof was first installed. The work of early builders is quite different from modern builders. For example, historic slate tile roofs would be installed without any sort of underlayment. Properly hung slate tiles were 100 percent weatherproof on their own without a membrane beneath them, and the same holds true with modern slate, too.

Modern roofers unfamiliar with slate put underlayments beneath shingles, which greatly decreases the tiles’ lifespan. Wood shingles used to be quite narrow because anything wider than six inches split or curled. Today, many mass-produced wood shingles are bigger than historic ones and have a shorter lifespan than their predecessors.

When you’re restoring a historical property to its former glory, it isn’t unreasonable to be extremely picky about the work your contractor is doing. A suitable company will work closely with you to reproduce the historic details of the original roof, and this often takes the skills of a highly trained craftsman. There’s a balance, though, in finding a contractor who uses historic techniques where they need to be visible and using modern (and usually cheaper) techniques where they won’t be seen. There are some historic roofing practices that aren’t done for a variety of reasons, but it’s mostly because they’re no longer safe or they’ve proven to be inefficient over time.

Recreating your home’s historical roof plays a role in returning your home to its original appearance. A good contractor helps you hunt down identical materials while giving you a weathertight, efficient roof. Have a question regarding skylight installations or gutters? Ask a roofing professional from Fortified Roofing, Middletown roofers.

Term explained by Fortified Roofing, Middletown roofers:

Underlayment

Roofing underlayments are typically made of synthetic materials to ensure that the roof is waterproof beneath the shingles. Underlayment is most commonly made of asphalt-coated felt and rubberized asphalt. The best type of underlayment depends on the roofing materials and the slope of the roof.

Middletown roofers from Fortified Roofing answer a question:

What is an often overlooked reason to replace a historic roof?

It doesn’t matter how good of a condition the roofing materials are in if the roof’s support system is beginning to fail. Long-lasting materials like clay and slate tiles often outlast the support system of a roof. When the support deteriorates, it puts the home at risk for significant property damage.

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