About 80 percent of North American residential roofs are covered with asphalt roof shingles. These shingles have been around since the turn of the 20th century and owe their popularity to low cost, ease of installation, good performance, and adaptability to most roof designs.
When the homebuilding business in my area was slow in the early 1980s, my crew and I did a lot of roofing. Soon we were introduced to pneumatic roof staplers and our production doubled. From the start, we decided to be fussy about the appearance of our roof installations. The slots in three-tab shingles had to be straight, as well as the horizontal course lines. After all, it doesn't take much more time to do a nice job than it does to hack things up.
Layovers, strip-offs and reroofs, and new homes: We did (and still do) it all. We learned some of the details of a well-installed shingle job simply by reading the wrapper on a bundle of roof shingles. Every bundle has the installation instruction right there on it as well as warranty information. Most manufacturers' instructions are similar if not identical. From time to time, I read the instructions on a new bundle just to see if anything has changed.
The bundle wrapper is a good place to start, but of course it doesn't have the room for detailed information about all the situations you will encounter when shingling a roof and, just as important, when preparing a roof to be shingled. From installing drip edge to capping ridges, you'll find all the details you need in this book to install a roof that will fulfill its two important and distinct functions: To enhance the beauty of the home and to remain watertight for many years.
The individual skills you need to install a roof are among the easiest in the building trades to acquire, and you don't need a lot of specialized tools to get started. Creating a beautiful and waterproof roof does take diligence, however, and I have tried to instill that diligence throughout this book. Also, to be a good roofer you need to know more than just the right detail procedures. You need to understand how the roof works as a system. This is why, for example, you'll find a chapter devoted to ventilation.
As with any trade, it is quite possible to be a superb and diligent roofing mechanic and lose money on every job. To make a good living, you need to know how to size up a job and create a strategy for attacking it efficiently. It's not enough to know the procedures for how to do the racking pattern or the pyramid pattern or even shingle from the top down. The trick is to know when each approach is most efficient, and this book is designed to arm you with the knowledge to make those decisions. Of course if you are a do-it-yourselfer, your livelihood won't depend on an efficient plan, but having one will help ensure that roofing your own house or garage doesn't become a career.
My crew and I find it's pretty rare for people to compliment us on our roof jobs. I guess most people just don't give the roof much thought. Of course when water leaks into the house, no matter what the source, you know who they call first. But that's okay. When we step back for a final look before getting into our trucks, we know we're looking at a job we can be proud of.
