Tile Roofing around Sandy
Concrete and clay tile, set on a roof built to carry it.
Tile Roofing for Sandy homes and buildings
Tile over battens or direct, with the underlayment doing the waterproofing beneath.
The bench neighborhoods catch canyon wind coming down out of Little and Big Cottonwood, and it hits rake edges harder than open valley wind does.
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
Intake and exhaust have to match
Attic ventilation is a balance, and most of the failures we find are unbalanced. Ridge vent with the soffit stuffed full of insulation is exhaust with no intake, so the attic pulls its air from the house instead and drags moisture up with it.
How it shows up
Frost on the sheathing in January, a hot attic in July, curling shingles on the upper courses, and an ice dam at the eave that nobody can explain.
Baffles are cheap
Keeping the insulation off the soffit with a proper chute fixes more roofs than most people would believe.
Concrete tile or clay
Most of the tile on houses here is concrete. It is heavier than clay, carries its color through the body, and a broken piece can usually be matched from current stock. Clay holds its color longer and costs more. Either way the work that keeps the house dry is the underlayment and flashing beneath it.
Walking a tile roof
Tile cracks under a careless boot. Anybody up there ought to know where to step, or be on staging.
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.
Dust storms before the rain
Ahead of a summer cell the wind arrives dry and full of grit off the open ground west of here. That grit gets driven into every horizontal surface on a roof, then the rain lands on top of it and packs it into a paste in the valleys and the gutter seams.
Grit is an abrasive
It grinds at the mat under foot traffic and it holds moisture against metal long after the surface has dried.
So we clear twice a year
Once before summer, once after the leaves are down.
Fog that never burns off
Valley fog in the cold months sits low and holds. It puts a film of moisture on everything without registering as precipitation, which is why a homeowner can swear it has not rained in three weeks while the roof has been wet the whole time. Organic debris in a valley stays soft and packed instead of drying out and blowing clear.
Where that shows first
Under the bottom course at a wall, and in the seam where a porch roof ties into the main body of the house.
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 Sandy
We walk a Sandy roof before quoting it rather than pricing it from a satellite image.
That proximity is most of what matters when weather moves through. Sandy 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 Sandy?
We do. Sandy 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 Sandy 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.
Will you tell me if I do not need a new roof?
Yes. Plenty of what we look at turns out to be a repair, and we say so. A roof with years left in it gets left alone, and you get the photographs either way.
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.
Where Sandy sits on our map
Crews reach Sandy on the normal week, not as a special run.