The decision is the roof in front of you

A call that starts with a color, or with the sentence "just give me a price on metal," is a call that started too late in the job. The covering is the last choice. What is on the building now, whether the deck will hold a fastener, where water is actually getting in, and whether this is a house or a low-slope commercial roof decide the work. A sample board does not.

Ocala Building Contractor makes that call in Ocala and Marion County on ranch houses, additions tied into older roofs, and small commercial buildings. Repair, replacement, architectural shingles, standing-seam metal, and a commercial assembly are not five tiles on a brochure. They are five different jobs. Naming the wrong one spends the money and leaves the leak where it was.

Repair only when the failure is defined

A repair is honest when you can point at the failure and the rest of the covering still has life. A split boot. Step flashing out of a sidewall. One valley lapped the wrong way. One slope that took an oak limb while the others still lie flat and hold their granules. The scope is that spot, the deck under it if the wood is wet, and the flashing that belongs there.

Patching is the wrong product when the covering is used up. Curled tabs, granules in the gutter, cement on older cement, and a deck that gives beyond the stained bay are not a tube of roof cement. Cement in a valley looks closed until the sun softens it. The straight answer is a roof replacement. How a defined repair is written, and why a coating is not a new roof, is the roof repair page.

Replacement means the old roof comes off

Replacement is a tear-off. The deck is seen in the daylight, bad sheathing is dealt with in the scope, and new underlayment, flashing, and covering go down. It is not a second layer nailed over a roof nobody wanted to haul off. You cannot inspect wood you refuse to uncover, and you cannot flash a wall that is still buried under the old shingles.

On a pitched house the new covering is usually architectural shingles or standing-seam metal. Neither one is a shortcut around the layers under it. Metal does not excuse a missing underlayment. Shingles do not excuse a cracked boot or a dead attic. The shingle assembly and the standing-seam assembly are separate pages because the field details are not interchangeable, even when the house shape looks the same from the street.

Shingles or metal is a site call, not a catalog call

Architectural shingles fit a workable pitch, a deck that will take them, and an attic that can move air. They are the ordinary Marion County house roof when starter, hips, valleys, boots, and drip edge are in the work. They are a bad answer on a roof that is nearly flat, and a bad answer if metal was chosen but clips, underlayment, and the tear-off were never priced.

Standing seam fits when the owner wants that system and the geometry can take panels, clips, and the flashing the system uses. It is not a fancy shingle. Exposed-fastener panels are a different product and do not get renamed standing seam to make the sale easier. A live oak will crease a panel the same week it tears a shingle. The tree is not impressed by the brochure.

A commercial building is not a large house

A low-slope commercial roof fails at drains, scuppers, and edges. A house shingle detail leaks there because it was built for a house. Deck, drainage, and whether the business stays open belong in the scope before a membrane is named. A steep-slope commercial building can take shingles or metal. Commercial roofing is that scope. If the system is outside the work, that is said before a number is written.

What gets looked at before a scope is named

• Covering: layers, brittle or bald shingles, open laps, ponding that is still there the next day
• Deck: from the attic where it can be seen, and from the roof where the surface gives underfoot
• Water path: valleys, sidewalls, and penetrations, not only the stain on the ceiling
• Edges: drip edge, gutter, fascia rot, and rake metal that wind can get under
• Attic: soffit intake, ridge or other exhaust, and bath fans dumping moisture overhead
• Trees: live oak leaves packed in a valley, and limbs lying on the ridge
• Building: a house, an addition cut into an old roof, or a commercial deck with equipment on it

A photo from the driveway misses most of that list. A fair scope needs someone on the roof or, where it cannot be walked safely, the same parts seen from a ladder and from the attic. Work that cannot be seen well enough to name is work this company declines. Guessing a system from the curb is how the wrong product gets sold.

Wind, hard rain, and heat on an inland lot

Marion County is not the High-Velocity Hurricane Zone. Miami-Dade and Broward are. That fact gets used badly in both directions. Some sales sheets talk as if every Florida roof were a Miami roof. Others talk as if an inland lot had no wind at all. Wind design for the job follows the Florida Building Code for the site on the permit: the height, the exposure, and the roof shape. A coastal product sheet is not a local roof, and skipping fasteners because the address is not on the beach is not a local roof either.

The weekday weather is an afternoon thunderstorm, often sideways, then sun hot enough to soften a sloppy patch. Humidity in a closed attic cooks the underside of a new covering. Live oaks drop leaves and limbs for a long season. Details are built for that. This page does not invent hail counts. A marked slope gets looked at. What an insurance claim pays is not written here.

Who is allowed to do the roofing

Ocala Building Contractor holds a certified building contractor license. That is not a roofing-only license. Roofing is performed within the general contracting work, and specialty roofing labor is done by the properly licensed trade. The scope, the permit, and who is responsible are still named. When the roof is one part of a larger build, that work stays with the general contractor.

What will not be called a roof

A coating brushed over tired shingles is not a replacement. A second layer is not an inspection. Screwed-down exposed-fastener panels are not standing seam. A shingle on a ponding commercial roof is not commercial roofing. The short version of this same judgment is on the roofing notes. The pages under this hub carry the field detail.