Mobile Roofing

Roof Inspection

An inspection isn't me squinting up from the driveway and nodding. I'm on the roof with my hands on it, checking the sealant strips on the shingles, the flashing at chimneys and sidewalls, and the rubber boots around your plumbing vents, which crack and leak somewhere around year eight or ten in this heat. Then I'm in the attic with a flashlight looking for daylight, staining on the underside of the deck, and any spot that feels soft underfoot. Forty-five minutes to an hour on most single-story homes in Midtown.

Because our siding installation company started on walls long before we ever set foot on roofs, I also check where roof meets wall, which is where half the leaks I chase actually begin. Get a roof inspection each spring and again once hurricane season lets go of us.

Roof Fixers

Call a man a roof fixer and you picture a bucket of tar and a good attitude. That is how most bad patches start. A smear of roof cement over a cracked pipe boot buys you a season, maybe two summers of afternoon storms rolling in off the bay, and by then the decking underneath has gone soft and the fix costs you a sheet of plywood instead of a boot.

When my roofers chase a leak, we pull shingles back and read the flashing, the valley metal and the nail line. Half the calls we run in Midtown are wind-lifted ridge caps or step flashing somebody caulked instead of weaving in properly. Most of those we close out in a morning.

We grew out of our siding installation company, so we read wall and roof together. Water rarely respects the line between them.

Roof Installation

Tear-off first, always. We take it down to bare deck because that's the only way to see what the last crew hid, and around here it's usually soft plywood by the chimney or a valley that's been quietly wet since the last tropical system. Bad sheathing gets replaced before anything goes back on.

Then synthetic underlayment, drip edge, valley metal, and six ring-shank nails per shingle instead of four, driven flush. Overdriven nails in a 130 mph wind zone are how a roof ends up in your neighbor's azaleas.

Most single-story homes off Airport or Old Shell take us two to three days. Steep pitch, a cut-up gambrel roof, or a lot of penetrations, add a day.

Siding is where our siding installation company got its start, and the lesson carried straight up: flashing details decide how long a roof installation actually lasts.

Tile Roofers

Tile is a different animal, and not every crew that hangs shingles should be climbing on it. Concrete and clay run close to a thousand pounds per square, so before we talk tile we look at your framing and decking. If the structure can't carry it, that's the end of the conversation.

The tile isn't what keeps you dry. The underlayment does. We run a self adhered membrane over the whole deck, flash the valleys and penetrations in metal, then set tile with screws and foam so a Gulf storm doesn't peel your roof off one piece at a time.

Figure a week or so on a typical Spring Hill house, longer if we're tearing off old roofing first.

Tile trims out beautifully against stucco, which is why our siding installation company ends up on these jobs from both sides.

Residential Roofing

Your house is not a warehouse, and I don't roof it like one. On a typical Midtown or Spring Hill home we strip to the deck, replace any plywood that's gone soft under an old leak, run drip edge on the eaves and rakes, set a proper starter course, and hand nail six per shingle so the wind rating on the wrapper actually means something when a named storm sits over the bay. Two days on most houses, three if the roof has a lot of valleys.

Here's what I see from other roofers: nails driven high above the strip, and no starter along the rakes. The shingles hold until they don't.

Roofing and siding meet at the wall, which is why our siding installation company started doing roofs at all. Water was getting behind good siding because of somebody's sloppy edge.

Roof Maintenance

Twice a year beats once every ten. Spring, before hurricane season starts June 1, and again in late fall once the live oaks and pines have finished dumping on you. Roof maintenance is mostly small stuff done on time: clearing valleys and gutters, resealing around chimneys and skylights, replacing the neoprene pipe boots that dry-rot and split around year eight or ten, and tightening exposed fasteners on metal panels that back out a little every summer.

Skip it and the water finds the cheap way in. Clogged gutters push water back under the shingle edge, the fascia goes soft, and now you're paying for wood, not caulk.

Yes, our siding installation company runs a roofing crew too, and those roofers will tell you honestly if a repair buys you five more years or two.

Roofing Repair Companies

Here is the thing about roof repair after a storm blows in off the Gulf: half the roof contractors calling you in September were three states away in August. Local roofers stay put. If the patch fails next hurricane season, you know which truck to flag down on Airport Boulevard.

A real repair means opening the area up, pulling the damaged course, checking the decking underneath for soft spots, and setting new underlayment and flashing before anything goes back down. What kills a repair is tar. Somebody smears roof cement over a valley or a pipe boot, it looks fine in the driveway, and the first July thunderstorm finds the hole again.

Sometimes the water is not coming from the roof at all. That is when our siding installation company ends up on the wall instead, chasing a bad window head.

New Roof

How do you know it's time for a whole new roof instead of another patch? When the third leak shows up in a brand new spot, the shingles are curling like chips and granules are washing out of your downspouts, patching is just renting time from the next tropical system.

A real replacement is a tear off, all the way down to the deck. Layering new shingles over old is how some roof company crews save a day, and it hides soft plywood, buries nail pops and puts weight on rafters a 1940s Midtown cottage never signed up for. We strip it, replace bad decking, run peel and stick in the valleys and along the eaves, then shingle up. Two days on a simple ranch, longer on a cut up or gambrel roof.

The same hands that run our siding installation company work the walls right below it.

Zinc Roofing

Zinc is the quiet one in the metal family. It weathers into a soft gray patina that heals its own scratches, and a properly detailed zinc roof will outlive the mortgage, sixty years and up. Salt air off the Bay doesn't chew on it the way it chews on cheap coated steel.

What kills zinc is the underside. Trap moisture back there and it corrodes from below, so we run a ventilated batten or a drainage mat instead of laying panels flat on felt and hoping. Metals matter too. Zinc runoff into aluminum gutters, or copper sitting anywhere uphill, and you get galvanic pitting. Panels move with heat, so clips and expansion room aren't optional.

A zinc roof installation on a typical Midtown house runs about a week, longer with dormers and valleys.

Zinc walls are something our siding installation company hangs as well, so wall to roof transitions get detailed by the same hands.

What the job involves

Here's how a tear-off actually goes. We strip the old shingles down to bare deck, every layer, because laying new roofing over an existing course hides the soft plywood that put us up there in the first place. Sheathing that flexes underfoot gets swapped out, usually half inch CDX. Then synthetic underlayment, peel and stick membrane in the valleys and around every penetration, fresh drip edge, new pipe boots. Those boots are what fail first down here. The rubber cracks after seven or eight summers of Mobile sun and quietly drips down a bathroom wall during the first August gullywasher.

A single story ranch off Airport runs two to three days if the sky behaves, longer on a steep cut-up roof with dormers.

Our siding installation company got into roofing services because we kept finding rot where wall meets roofline, so our roofers fix that flashing instead of pointing at it.

What it costs

Here's how the number moves. Pitch, how many layers of old shingle come off, valleys, pipe boots, and whether the decking under it all survived the last named storm. That's why I won't quote an average roof replacement cost over the phone and pretend it means anything for your house. We climb up, do an honest roof inspection, and hand you a written figure. Call me at (251) 551-3653 and we'll get you on the schedule for roofing quotes on your own place.

Siding I can be plainer about, since our siding installation company measures both while we're up there. Mid-grade vinyl runs around $3.43 a square foot installed in Mobile, fiber cement and stucco climb well past that, and a full wrap on a 50-foot ranch usually falls between $3,000 and $7,000.

Why choose us for this

You've got a ring on the ceiling after the last squall rolled in off the bay, and what you want is to hire somebody once and stop thinking about it.

Numbers that hold: What we write on the estimate is what lands on the invoice, unless you change the scope.

One roof at a time: We don't tear off yours and disappear to a job in Spring Hill for three days.

No signature today: Our roofing quotes stay good while you think it over.

Clean yard: Magnet passes over the grass and the driveway before we pull out.

We're rarely the low bid, on purpose. Proper underlayment, flashing at every wall and chimney, and a real roof inspection first takes hours some crews skip.

Nine years of this, roofs and walls both, since our siding installation company handles the whole envelope. The estimate costs nothing and books nothing.

Frequently asked questions