Replacement · asphalt shingle
Asphalt shingle tear-off
The most common replacement on a Ventura County house, and the one where the word “tear-off” is doing real work. It means the old roof comes off down to the wood before anything new goes on.
Why we do not lay over
You can nail a second layer of shingle over the first. It is faster and it is cheaper on the day. What it also does is hide the deck, add weight the framing was not asked about, and put your new shingles on an uneven surface that will telegraph every ridge and cup underneath them. The next roofer then has two layers to remove instead of one, and you pay for that too.
The other problem is that a layover is a decision made without information. Everything worth knowing about a roof this old is under the shingles.
The deck is the part nobody can price from the ground
Until the shingles are off, the sheathing is a guess. Most decks in this county come up sound and need nothing. Some have soft spots at a valley, under a swamp cooler that leaked for a decade, or around a chimney where the flashing was wrong from the start. Occasionally there is dry rot in the fascia that only shows once the drip edge is off.
So the honest way to write that into an estimate is an allowance: a stated number of sheets included, and a stated per-sheet price for anything past it. You should be able to read your proposal and know exactly what happens if we find rot, before we find it. If a bid does not say, ask. A number that only appears after the roof is open is not a number you agreed to.
We photograph the deck once it is bare, and you get those photos whether or not anything was wrong with it.
What actually goes back on
A shingle roof is a system, and the shingle is the part you can see from the street. The rest of it is where roofs are won and lost.
Underlayment
The layer that keeps water out while the roof is open and backs up the shingle afterward. Synthetic or felt, and the choice belongs on the estimate.
Valleys and penetrations
Where water concentrates and where leaks start. Every pipe, every flue, every wall termination gets new flashing, not the old one bent back down.
Drip edge and starter
The eave and rake details that stop wind from getting a hand under the first course. Cheap to do right, expensive to skip.
Ventilation
Intake at the eave and exhaust up high. A roof that cannot breathe cooks its own shingles from the back and shortens the life you just paid for.
Title 24
Cool-roof requirements depend on your roof's slope and climate zone. Low-slope roofs are regulated statewide; most pitched shingle roofs in coastal Ventura County face only a modest requirement or none. We confirm the exact requirement with Building & Safety on every job.
Before you sign for one of these
This page describes the most expensive thing we sell. It is worth thirty minutes of somebody standing on your roof to confirm you need it.
The test is not the roof's age. It is whether the shingle still has anything left in it. A twenty-year-old roof holding its granules and still flexible is a rejuvenation candidate. One that has worn through to the mat across the field is not, and no treatment or coating changes that. We will show you which one you have, in photographs, and say so either way.
Solar
Panels come off for a tear-off and go back on afterward, and that is a real cost with the solar company's name on it, not ours. It belongs in the proposal from the beginning. It is also the single biggest reason to check whether the shingle underneath still qualifies for a treatment first, because a treatment goes on with the array bolted down where it is.