Tile Roofing around Draper
Concrete and clay tile, set on a roof built to carry it.
Tile Roofing for Draper homes and buildings
Tile over battens or direct, with the underlayment doing the waterproofing beneath.
West-facing slopes take the worst of it in Draper. Afternoon sun at this elevation works on the mat all summer, then hail comes out of the same quarter in the shoulder seasons, so one plane of a roof routinely ages years ahead of the others.
Tile is a rain screen. The underlayment under it is the actual roof.
What matters on tile roofing
The load question comes first
Tile weighs several times what asphalt weighs. Before anything else we establish whether the framing was built for it or has to be reinforced. Putting tile on a roof that cannot carry it is not a roofing decision, it is a structural one.
The underlayment is the roof
Tile is a rain screen. Water gets past it routinely and the underlayment beneath is what actually keeps the building dry, which is why the specification of that layer matters more than the tile profile above it.
How the system goes together
Decking is the part nobody plans for
The sheathing under the roof only gets looked at once every couple of decades, which is when the old roof comes off. Older homes up here might have skip sheathing, plank decking with gaps, or plywood that has been soft over a leak for years. It gets replaced where it is bad, because fasteners do not hold in punky wood and a soft deck telegraphs every wave through a new roof.
It is measured, not guessed
Sheet count gets documented once the roof is open, before anything goes back down.
Ridge vent against box vents
A continuous ridge slot pulls air along the entire peak, which is why it outperforms a row of box vents on most houses. Box vents still win in specific situations: a hip roof with almost no ridge to cut, a roof broken into separate attic spaces that do not share air, or a low ridge where a slot would sit under drifted snow all winter.
Never mix the two on one attic
Put both on the same space and the ridge pulls its air from the nearest box vent instead of from the soffit. The attic barely moves and the roof looks correctly vented from the driveway.
What we check
- Cracked or slipped tile across the field
- Battens and underlayment beneath the tile
- Weight the framing is carrying
- Flashing at walls, valleys and penetrations
What the job looks like
Get on the roof
We walk it rather than look from the drive, check the decking underfoot, the flashings and the ventilation, and photograph what we find before any number is discussed.
Show you what we saw
The photographs come back to you with a plain read of what the roof needs and, just as often, what it does not need yet.
Crew on site
The crews we hire work under Hancock’s direction, staged so landscaping and the drive are protected, working the detail in the order it is supposed to go on rather than the order that is quickest.
Leave it clean
Site cleared at the end of every day, a magnet run over the whole yard for nails at the finish, and the roof walked with you before we go.
Freeze and thaw works on everything
A February day here can swing forty degrees between sunrise and mid afternoon. Water gets into a nail hole, a lap, a crack in the flashing sealant. It freezes overnight and expands. It thaws and goes deeper. Multiply that by a hundred cycles a winter and small openings become real ones. It is slow, and it is the reason a roof that was fine three winters ago is leaking now.
Sealant is a maintenance item
Anything relying on caulk has a clock on it. Flashings that rely on metal geometry instead of sealant last a great deal longer.
A slide onto a walkway
A loaded slope above a front door or a side path is a safety matter before it is a roofing one. Snow releases in one piece, and a hundred pounds landing on a step is how people get hurt. It also tears at the gutter on the way past and bends the hangers out of the fascia.
Fixing it means changing the geometry
Retention hardware, or a small roof over the entry to break the fall, or moving the path. Something has to change, because the slope will keep doing what slopes do.
Where roofs go wrong
The shortcut we see most
Tile laid on a roof whose framing was never checked for the load, or over an underlayment specified for asphalt rather than for the exposure tile leaves it under.
What good looks like instead
Structure confirmed first, then an underlayment chosen on the understanding that it, not the tile, is the waterproofing layer.
Signs worth a look
- Cracked or slipped tiles visible from the ground
- Debris packed in the tile channels
- Staining on a ceiling below a valley
- Sagging visible along a ridge line
What to expect
Structural check first
Before a tile roof is specified, the framing gets assessed for the load. Concrete and clay weigh several times what asphalt weighs and that is a structural question, not a roofing preference.
Walking a tile roof
Tile breaks under foot traffic if it is walked carelessly. Maintenance and any later work needs somebody who knows where the bearing points are.
Repair stock
Keeping spare tiles from the original run is worth doing. Profiles and colours change, and an exact match years later is not always available.
Getting to Draper
We have worked enough of Salt Lake County to know which builders put up which subdivisions and where they cut the same corner twice. That is worth more on a roof than any brochure.
That proximity is most of what matters when weather moves through. Draper sits in Salt Lake County, and we are on roofs across it regularly enough to know how the housing there was built.
Questions we get asked
Not the question you had? Call the shop and ask a person. We would rather talk it through than have you guess from a website.
(801) 382-8898Do you actually work in Draper?
We do. Draper falls well inside the radius we run, and being there often is what lets us tell you how the housing around it was built.
How fast can you get to Draper after a storm?
We stop the water first. Temporary work is genuinely temporary and we say so, but it buys the time to do the actual repair right.
How long does a roof replacement take?
Most houses in this valley are a one to two day job once the crew is on site. Steeper pitches, multiple layers to strip and complicated roofs with a lot of valleys take longer, and we tell you which yours is before we start.
Do you handle the insurance side?
On hail-damaged roofs, we work with your insurance to get the roof covered. We document the damage thoroughly with photographs, so the claim reflects what is actually on the roof.
What happens if you find bad decking?
We show you. The decking is only visible during a tear-off, so that is when soft sheathing gets found and replaced. We photograph it rather than just add it to a list.
Where Draper sits on our map
Crews reach Draper on the normal week, not as a special run.