How Much Does a Roof Weigh? If you’re thinking of a new roof this year, an important item to consider here in the greater Cincinnati area is the weight of the roofing system. The winter of 2013-2014 was tough. Snow fell early and stayed late and snow is heavy. Many homes have two layers of shingles which can add as much as 720 pounds per 10x10 measurement on your trussing, add to that heavy snows, and cracks can appear. If your home suddenly has cracks in the ceilings, weight might be the culprit.   Today’s roofing materials include a wide range of weights. For comparison, let’s look at the weight of one “square” of various products. A “square” covers 100 square feet of roof area (10’x10’). ALUMINUM: 40 – 70 poundsCOPPER: 100 – 125 poundsFIBERGLASS SHINGLES: 275 – 425 pounds SLATE: 900 – 1300 poundsCLAY TILE: 1100 – 2000 pounds   Why Does Roof Weight Matter? So, why is roof weight important? Let’s look at how weight impacts key areas of overall roof performance. AGING STRUCTURES. As a structure ages, it weakens. Structural lumber may crack and foundations may move. A low weight roof system can prolong the structure’s life and integrity. A case in point is the First United Methodist Church in Sidney, Ohio. This impressive, looming structure had a clay tile roof that was about 80 years old when, at great expense, the decision was made to remove the tiles, clean them, put new under-layment on the roof, and re-install the tiles. Just a couple of years after this work was done, a major beam snapped above the sanctuary. It was unable to handle the weight of the roof.HIGH WINDS. Regardless of its weight, properly secured roofing materials can meet even the most strict wind uplift requirements. In the case of catastrophic storms, very heavy weight roofing materials pose a huge risk if they become airborne. FIRE RISK. Many types of roofing materials are designed to resist combustion from exterior fires. However, most home fires start inside the structure. Heavier roofs create a greater risk of collapse that could trap firefighters inside the structure. This means that firefighters have to contain the fire from the outside rather than enter the building and try to stop the fire.    ENERGY EFFICIENCY. Heavy roofing materials typically have great thermal mass. While this thermal mass can offer some nominal R Value, it also holds heat. This means that summer heat absorbed by the sun can be held by the roof and continue to keep your attic hot even after the sun goes down.   The weight of a roofing material, when carefully considered, can be a significant portion of your roofing decision. At A New Rooftime, our free estimates begin in the attic to check for signs of roof weight. Call Missy today at 513.753.8463, to schedule a free inspection and receive our professional analysis of how much mass your home can handle. ...read more

Did you know: according to CBYP.COM there are 348 roofing contractors in the greater Cincinnati - Northern Kentucky region?! The roofing industry, unlike plumbers and electricians, is an un-licensed trade. Anyone with the desire, telephone, truck and a ladder can become a roofer in our market, and the ladder is sometimes optional! There are at least two "big name" home improvement stores that advertise their roofing installation services and offer the power of their big name as protection. A quick check with the BBB though, reveals that one has over five THOUSAND complaints and the other has over 620! Their estimators are just that, as they arrive in their personal cars with NO LADDERS, I told you they were sometimes optional! But hey: they look good in their orange aprons and their name tags as they walk around eyeballing your roof measurement! As an added bonus, the Latino labor they send in to do the job will be fast, so you've got THAT going for you….which is nice…(sorry Bill). So what is a homeowner to do, when trying to get a quality roof installed by a professional contractor that will be around in the future to stand behind their work? Step one might be to avoid using the yellow pages for names and numbers! The Over-night Sensations that jump into these books every year make bold claims to get a needy homeowners attention; such as "over blank years experience" and my favorite, "Licensed, Bonded, Insured". There are now so many telephone books; Yellow Book, Hamilton County, Clermont County, Warren County, Butler County, Northern Kentucky, and the Christian Blue Pages, that their salesman are so grateful for a sale that they do zero copy audits. It's just," buy and ad, make a claim, and rock on....here's the bill, thank you very much for your on-time payment"…it's actually kinda funny and a little bit scary to look through a phone book from five years ago and see all the disconnected numbers and closed business's, usually with a line in the ad that says 20 year labor warranty! There are shingle makers that actually teach new roof start-ups, to add up all the years that each member of their company has been working in the roofing trade, and to use THAT total as their (collective) experience! Sneaky, but it still works. As to the LBI (licensed, bonded, insured) claim, we say, make them prove it! Tell them you need two things: first, that those terms be incorporated into the actual contract they present; and second, that you receive a copy of all three documents with contact information for you to follow-up on. The roofer making this claim will disappear before your very eyes! There is NO license, the only bond a roofer can post is for the City of Cincinnati (not even Hamilton County), and most guys do NOT have workers compensation. If they put it in their contract and do NOT have it, they have just committed FELONY contract fraud to charge you thousands of dollars. Hire one of these guys and you might be seeking a WARRENT, not a WARRENTY! Quick joke: what do you call a roofer wearing a three piece suit? The Defendant! Roof Time suggests that you ask your friends and family who they used. Check with the BBB and consider spending 30 bucks a year to join Angie's List. Use the Internet; information is why Al Gore invented the dang thing! Go to Yelp, Service Magic, Facebook, and Merchants Circle. Read what others are posting about the roofers they used and were abused by. Roofers can be like cockroaches, scurrying away from any type of light! A socially active roofer is not going to try to disappear down the road, and will diligently work to satisfy his (plugged-in) customer base to earn praise instead of criticism! Rooftime began back in 1995, when Ricky Feltner and his wife Sandy started a small family business. By 1999, Preferred Roofing's, four estimators (which included one son and one son-in-law) and terrific work crews had earned a ranking in the Top 100 Contractors in America, and had sales in excess of two million dollars! Ricky passed away at the end of 1999, and the company struggled to carry on with-out his dynamic leadership. Today Ricky's legacy has been preserved by no less than FIVE roofing contractors that were once part of his vision, all successfully operating their own companies using the same principles and ideals he established over 15 years ago! At Roof Time, Sandy is still answering the calls (even at nights and on the weekends) and Ricky's grandson Justin is now a project estimator! Roof Time is a true family owned and operated business with deep community roots; over fifteen year's business experience, and is now into our 3RD generation of serving Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky! Estimates are free and include an attic inspection&color; digital pictures of what our estimators find. Roof Time utilizes all the best of today's technology such as Thermal imaging cameras to pinpoint hidden leaks and decay, and satellite measurement software to offer'to the inch measurements"for"to the penny pricing'. Visitwww.time2roof.comor call Sandy at 859.344.TIME to get a free inspection of your roof, attic insulation, siding or gutter system!   ...read more

No, not the killer tune by Dennis Yost and The Classic Four, the weather here in Northern Kentucky and Cincinnati. Did you know that since September 14th 2008 (Hurricane Ike) we have had a 62 MPH wind on November 22nd 2008, a huge thunderstorm with 59 MPH winds on February 10th 2009, two weeks of ICE and SNOW that shut down the state of Kentucky in late February 2009, and  a monster HAIL storm in Hebron and Burlington Kentucky on June 28th 2009? Now this year we have had 3.45 inches of rain in a single day, 82 MPH winds in Grant County on June 15th, and the HAIL storms have not even begun yet! Our region gets the bad - roof damaging, window busting, car dinging, hail the last week of June and the first week of July every summer! Get ready! Roofers are happy and so are: handymen, plumbers, carpenters, and just about everyone else with a truck and a ladder! Everyone's a roofer now-a-days! If homeowners are bummed now about their homes from a storm, just wait till one of these 'roofers' get done with them! Forget about these guys having; insurance protection / coverage, flashing skills, and the big 3: proper nail placement, quantity, and size. Mis-nailed shingles, is the number one problem the estimators at Rooftime find, when we get called back onto one of these 'roofer" specials. A shingle tab measures 12" in length and in general will have a 5" exposure. Each tab requires a minimum of 4 nails per tab: placed in a SPECIFIC pattern and a SPECIFIC location! Using too short a nail (1 1/4" is standard), placed too high or too low on the shingle, or only having 3 (or less!) nails securing the tab is a recipe for disaster! One box of roofing nails can do an average sized home. A box holds 7200 nails! That's 7200 reasons for a shingle manufacturer to void their warranty, and 7200 ways your new roof can fail! You know those house creaking and settling noises, horror film directors love to use in their movies to build suspense? YOUR house does that too, and a lot of it is the wood decking your shingles are nailed to. When a roof is mis-nailed; as the deck flexes, as the winds rip at the edges, as the snow and ice freeze and thaw over the faces, those tabs pull at the nails. Shingles that are not nailed correctly are DOOMED to fail! Do us both a favor and get our FREE quote when it's time to replace your roof! Our crews are certified by the Owens Corning Corp. on correct roofing and nail placement, plus we send a company inspector out to check the roof in general and our nail patterns in specific! A Rooftime roof job will last, we guarantee it! ...read more