What on your roof is worn, and what is only old, from the coast inland

A roof is a set of parts on different clocks, and on this arc two of those clocks run faster than anywhere else in the state: the hardware near the coast, and the underlayment over a hot inland attic. Tell it when the house was built and what has been done, and it will show where each part sits.

This is not a diagnosis and not a prediction. It compares ages to the service lives roofers generally expect. Here a covering can fail at ten years on the coast or last past twenty inland; salt, attic heat and installation matter more than the calendar. Use it to decide what to look at, not what to buy.

Nothing here leaves your screen. There is no form and no record.

Check the roof, part by part

When was the house built? What is on the roof now?

What has already been replaced?

Leave a row as Original if that part has never been replaced, or if a previous owner may have done it while they owned it and nothing came with the house. Unknown is a normal answer on this coast.

The covering itself Vent boots and penetration seals Flashings at walls, chimneys and transitions Fasteners, drip edge and valley metal Underlayment The decking Gutters and the roof edge Skylights and other openings (if applicable)

Six places a roof gives way here. Only one of them is the part everyone looks at. Which is why the boots, the flashings and the hardware are worth knowing the age of, not just the shingles.

Tap to enlarge

1 Ridge and exhaust. Where the attic is supposed to breathe out. Sized in 1975 on half this arc.
2 The shingle field. The part everyone looks at. The sun works it from above, the attic from below.
3 The valley. Every afternoon’s rain, funnelled into one seam.
4 Wall flashing. Where the garage roof meets the house. Rebuilt metal outlives the shingles; caulk does not.
5 The vent boot. A rubber collar on a faster clock than the roof around it. The arc’s most common leak.
6 Eaves, drip edge and soffit intake. The hardware salt reaches first, and the intake the attic breathes through.

Why the shingle is the youngest thing on most of these roofs

A re-roof here usually swaps the shingle and keeps what surrounds it: flashings sealed rather than rebuilt, boots reused, hardware left in place. The field resets; the junctions and the fasteners do not. That is why this page asks about the boots and the hardware separately, and why the honest answer for many houses is that nobody knows, because the record of past work left with a previous owner.

The same applies in reverse. A house can carry a young shingle over rusting drip edge and cracked vent boots, and the first ceiling stain will read as shingle failure to everyone who does not climb. If a report blames the field without mentioning the metal or the boots, ask what those looked like.

Use this page

This tool may be reproduced or linked to freely, crediting flatwoodsroofing.com. If it helps someone in Deltona or Melbourne see that the shingle is fine and the hardware is not, it has done what it is for.

Holding quotes already? The quote comparison sets three of them side by side, row for row.