What is coming due up there, and what can wait

A roof is a dozen components on a dozen different clocks, and on housing as old as Rhode Island's, several of those clocks started before anyone alive can remember. Say when the house went up and what has been done since, and this shows where each part likely sits.

This is not an inspection and not a prediction. The ranges are the ones the trade commonly works with, nothing more. A covering can quit at twelve years or run past thirty, and on a building with more than one household the heat under the deck moves these clocks more than the calendar does. Use it to decide what to look at, not what to buy.

Nothing here is sent anywhere. It runs in your browser, there is no form to fill in, and nothing you enter leaves this page.

Roof age check

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

What has already been replaced?

Leave a row as Original if it has never been done, or if it was done before you owned the house and you have no record of it.

Roof covering Flashing at walls, valleys and penetrations Underlayment and ice-and-water shield Gutters and downspouts Attic ventilation Skylights (if you have them) Chimney crown, cap and masonry (if you have them) Fascia and soffit Siding or exterior cladding Window seals

A roof here rarely gives out in the field. It gives out where the heat gets out. Which is why flashing, not shingle, is the item most worth knowing the age of.

Tap to enlarge

1 The ridge. One ridge over two households, and one of them pays to replace it.
2 The field. The part everyone looks at, and rarely the part that actually failed.
3 Valleys. Most of them were cut in later, when the house was divided into flats.
4 The chimney. Often two of them, and often neither one carries anything any more.
5 Penetrations. Two kitchens and two bathrooms mean twice the holes on the same roof.
6 The overhang. Where heat from a flat you do not control comes back down as ice.

Why the age of the shingle is not the age of the roof

On this housing, covering over the old layer was normal for generations, and every time it happened the surface reset while everything underneath kept its age. That is why the tool asks about the underlayment on its own line — and why, on a house that has changed hands as often as these have, the honest answer is frequently that nobody knows.

Flashing tells the same story. A roof that was replaced five years ago can be wearing metal from thirty years ago, re-sealed on the day because it was quicker. When someone tells you the roof is recent, ask whether the junctions are recent too — on converted houses they outnumber the ones the roof was born with.

Use this page

Copy this tool, print its results, or link to it, with attribution to pawtuxetroofing.com. If a landlord association, a housing counsellor or a neighbour weighing a purchase can use it, that is what it is for.

Quotes already on the table? The comparison checklist lines up as many as three of them on what each one actually names.