Roof replacement
Replacing a roof in this county starts with a question most places never ask: whether the roof is yours to replace. Once that is settled, the decision is about the layers you will never see, not the one you can.
Before anything: who signs
If the home sits in a villa, townhouse or condominium community, the roof is very likely common property. The association contracts it, schedules it across phases and funds it from reserves, and an individual quote for one unit inside that system does not mean anything. The declaration settles it in a line, and the management company can quote that line from memory.
On single-family housing outside those communities, the ordinary process applies and everything below is directly useful.
What is actually being replaced
On a tile roof, often not the tile. Concrete tile can be lifted, stacked and reset over new underlayment, which is a different job from a full tear-off with different labour, a different price and a different result. Establish which of the two you are being quoted before comparing anything else.
Then the underlayment, which is the layer that keeps the house dry and the one that decides when the roof is finished. Ask for the product name rather than the category: two quotes that both say synthetic can be a decade apart.
Then the hardware, specified to the address. Within a few miles of open water, coated or stainless fasteners and rebuilt flashing are the whole difference. West of the turnpike that same money belongs in the underlayment instead.
Reading two quotes on the same house
Where a community fixes the tile profile and colour, the visible layer stops being a variable and the comparison becomes cleaner, not harder. What separates two honest quotes is reset-or-replace, the underlayment, the fasteners, the flashing at each junction, and whether the enclosure connection is included.
The comparison tool on this site walks those points one at a time.
What to ask every bidder
- Is the tile being reset, or replaced?
- Different jobs, different prices, different lifespans. A quote that does not say has left out its biggest single variable, and the breakage allowance with it.
- What fasteners and flashing metal, for this distance from the water?
- On the Intracoastal it decides the outcome. Twelve miles west it barely matters. A single specification for the whole county is a price list, not a plan.
- What is the price per sheet of decking?
- Nobody knows how many sheets are soft until the roof is open. Without a rate, the largest unknown in the job is not in the bid.
- Has the community approved this product?
- Where profile and colour are specified, approval is a step with a date on it. A quote made without it is a schedule that has not been tested.
- 1 The ridge. The highest, hottest course, and where a shared roof usually begins and ends.
- 2 The field. Tile or shingle above, and the underlayment that actually keeps water out below.
- 3 The valley. One channel carrying what two slopes shed, and where debris settles between rains.
- 4 Wall flashing. Where an addition or an enclosure meets the house, and where neither trade owns the seam.
- 5 Penetrations. Collars, curbs and skylights: holes cut on purpose, then sealed. They open first.
- 6 Eaves and metal. Drip edge and fasteners. Near the water they end the roof; twelve miles west they do not.