Roof replacement in Meaford

On brick houses, the roof covering is the easy part. What decides whether the new roof performs is every place it meets masonry: chimneys, gable walls that rise above the roof line, and the junctions where a brick addition meets the original house.

Done properly, each of those gets step flashing woven into the shingle courses and separate counter-flashing let into a raked mortar joint and sealed. Done the fast way, it gets a bead of caulk against the brick face, which looks identical on handover day and fails in a few years. Since this is invisible once the job is done, it is worth asking any roofer explicitly what they intend to do at the chimney, and worth being wary of a quote that does not mention flashing at all.

We replace flashings on a re-roof rather than reusing them. Old flashing under new shingles is a false economy that shortens the life of the whole roof to the life of its oldest component.

Roofs facing the open bay take a long fetch of wind with nothing to break it. The specification response is the same as elsewhere on the shoreline but it matters more here: high-wind rated shingles, six-nail fastening, adhered starter at eaves and rakes, and ridge caps fastened for the exposure rather than to the minimum.

We also pay attention to the windward elevation specifically. It is normal for the water side of a Meaford roof to age faster than the sheltered side, and there is no way to make them wear identically. What proper installation does is stop that difference turning into premature failure, which is what happens when an exposed elevation was built to the same standard as a sheltered suburban roof.

Older Meaford houses often have shallow overhangs, which means the eavestrough and the eave detail are doing more work than they would on a modern house with a generous soffit. Water leaving the roof lands close to the wall, and in freeze-thaw it does so repeatedly onto the same masonry.

During a replacement, this is the moment to get the eave assembly right: ice and water shield well up from the edge, drip edge that actually directs water into the trough rather than behind it, and eavestrough sized for the roof area feeding it. Undersized trough on a large roof plane overflows in heavy rain and freezes into a solid mass in winter, and that mass is heavy enough to pull fascia off an older house.

If the eavestrough is going to need replacing within a couple of years anyway, doing it alongside the roof is cheaper and it means the two systems get detailed to work together rather than being fitted by different trades a few years apart.