Durham roofers for repair, replacement and storm damage

What roofs go through in Durham

Durham is Piedmont, not coast. We don't get the salt or the sustained wind the beach gets, and we don't get the hail Kansas gets. What we get is heat, humidity, pines, and a tropical system every few Septembers that reminds everyone how tall those pines are.

Humidity is the slow killer. From May through September an attic off Guess Road or in Parkwood runs 120–140 degrees with wet air trapped under the deck, and shingles cook from below as much as from above. Outside, the same humidity feeds Gloeocapsa magma, the algae that paints black streaks down every north-facing slope in the city. The streaks are cosmetic for years, then they aren't, because algae holds moisture against the granules.

Pines are the fast killer. Loblolly pines grow 80–100 feet tall on our red clay, they root shallow, and when the ground is saturated after two days of remnant rain a 40 mph gust is enough. Fran in 1996 put pines through roofs from Duke Park to Hope Valley, and every hurricane remnant since — Florence, Michael, the ones that didn't get a headline — has done it on a smaller scale. Falling limbs, not hail, are the storm damage roof repair Durham crews actually do.

Then there's the housing. Durham has two roof populations. The mill houses and bungalows in Old West Durham, East Durham, Trinity Park and Watts-Hillandale date from the 1920s through the 1950s: low-slope porch roofs, board decking instead of plywood, chimneys that were never flashed properly, and often two or three layers of shingles on top of each other. The subdivisions that filled in from the 1990s onward — Woodcroft, Hope Valley Farms, Parkwood, Treyburn, everything off NC-54 and Fayetteville Road down to Southpoint — have steep, cut-up architectural shingle roofs, and the 1990s ones are at the end of their life right now.

What we do

Roof repair — leaks at pipe boots, chimney flashing, valleys and skylights; shingles lifted by wind; soft decking around a long-ignored drip. Most repairs are $300–$1,500 and finished in a visit. See roof repair.

Roof replacement — full tear-off, decking check, synthetic underlayment, ice-and-water membrane in the valleys and around penetrations, architectural shingles with six nails each. Typical Durham homes run $9,000–$22,000. See roof replacement.

Storm damage and insurance claims — tarping, photos from the roof, a written scope for your adjuster, and the repair itself, whether it was wind, a hurricane remnant or a pine. See storm damage repair.

Roof inspections — a walked inspection with a written photo report, for a house you're buying, a claim you're filing, or a roof you're not sure about. See roof inspection.

Metal roofing — standing-seam and exposed-fastener systems for the farmhouses and new builds north of the city, and anyone in town who wants the last roof they'll pay for. See metal roofing.

The license question, honestly

North Carolina requires a general contractor license for any job costing $40,000 or more. A shingle replacement on most Durham houses comes in under that, and a repair always does, which means the state does not require a roofer to hold anything to do the work most homeowners hire for. That is why the roofer near me Durham search returns so many trucks with no license number on the door. We carry the license anyway, because it's how you prove to a homeowner that somebody has checked your work and your insurance. Ask any roofer for their license number and their liability and workers' comp certificates. If they can't produce all three, keep looking.

Where we work

All of Durham — downtown and the mill neighborhoods, Duke Park, Northgate, Croasdaile, Hope Valley, Woodcroft, Parkwood, RTP, Treyburn — and north through Bahama and Rougemont to the Person County line. We also cover Chapel Hill, Carrboro, Hillsborough, Morrisville, Cary, Apex, Wake Forest and the west side of Raleigh. If your number starts with 919 or 984, we cover you. The pricing page has real numbers before you call.