Want the best cedar shake shingles in Portland? We got ‘em!
Better quality cedar shakes mean 80% lower maintenance over the life of your roof.
It’s taken us 25 years but we did it! We have worked hard enough and smart enough to get big enough to get the best mills in Canada to make us our own top quality cedar shakes! This is a huge blessing for all involved. A real win-win situation. The standards are nothing short of perfection. What this means to you is that we are skipping all of the middle men! Those middle men markups traditionally add up to $30 to $70 per square for a homeowner. With our new Canadian sourcing, we can bring absolute top-quality cedar shake shingles to Portland and supply them to our customers for just a little more than all the others offer lower grade crappy shakes. It’s a beautiful thing! Continue Reading…
Roof Leak Clues: The Single Nail in the Key Way
In 1995, an unknown roofer placed a solitary nail right in the middle of this roof’s drain area. From the ground, it looks like just a bunch of roofing up there, and as long as it’s not leaking you feel pretty good about everything. But that nail was in a key way. That’s the roofing term for the space between the cedar shakes. It’s a very important part of a cedar roof…in getting water off your roof and into the drains. When it rains, your shake roof traffics all the water through these areas. So, when the idiot disguised as a roofer nailed that single nail into a key way 12 years ago, he set a very expensive series of events into motion. It’s almost unbelievable what this nail did.
Snakebit! How an expensive Portland roof was ruined on the day it was installed…SIX years ago!
Almost looks like snakebite doesn’t it? This picture shows the staple holes from beneath a cedar shake. The felt underlayment material should not be rotted away. It’s one of many such holes we found on a 6-year-old roof in West Linn, Oregon. The homeowner called us because this roof was leaking in at least 20 places! When we took the roof apart, we found what you’re seeing in the picture. When you’ve seen as many roofs as we have, solving this mystery was a piece of cake.
We asked the homeowner if he knew who roofed his home. He confirmed that it was a local roofing contractor, still in business in Portland. This should have been a super roof! It was installed with ¾ inch, 50-year CCA, treated cedar shakes. Other than routine maintenance, this roof should have outlived the homeowner! We advised the homeowner to contact the roofing contractor to get his roof replaced under a workmanship warranty.
How Roof Maintenance can Save Your Residential Community Thousands in Replacement Costs
Here’s a case study to show how communities can save thousands of dollars by simply maintaining their roofs.
Property: Village at Forest Heights, Portland Oregon
Size of roof on property: 885 squares on a pitch of 8/12.
Current replacement value: $693,000
Degradation schedule if left unmaintained is 15% during the first 5 years, 25% in the second 5 years, 35% in the 3rd 5 years and then between the 15th and 20th year the roof will need to be replaced. If you use simple math you can see what unmaintained degradation costs.
If the roof is treated every 5 years with a environmentally gentle but effective wood preservative treatment (we don’t use harsh chemicals, and we don’t recommend pressure-washing for roof maintenance) the degradation is held to 15% every 5 years. If repairs are made on the roof every 5 years prior to treatment, the repairs will blend in for a uniform appearance.
There are 200 shakes in each square of roofing. The Village has 885 squares.
That’s 177,000 shakes on the property. 15% degradation would mean replacing an average of 2,655 shakes every 5 years.
We replaced 4,706 shakes in 2007 as a 10-12 year old roof with no previous maintenance. This is a very good roof for new construction. (Quality of shakes in new construction varies, but is seldom this good.)
Let’s forecast the expenses to properly maintain this roof……
Treatment in 2012 will be $35,400 (at current prices, unadjusted for inflation)
Repairs will be an average of 2,655 shakes for $18,585.
Total maintenance expense in 2012 is estimated to be $53,985. And remember, the value of your shake roof is increasing as it ages, due to replacement costs. In 2007, shake prices went up $100 a square. On this property alone, that’s an increase in value of $88,500.
Because of proper maintenance, this 17-year-old roof is at 30% of its expected service life while un-maintained cedar roofs of the same age are being totally replaced all over Portland.
How old is your cedar roof? Ready to talk about maintaining it?
The Day I Moved Mrs. Helen Geiger into her Living Room
It was just a “leak in my ceiling” call. At her door, Helen began to tell me of her concern that her roof was not working right. As I came to the door, I had noticed an unusually large amount of tree debris had been building up on her roof. She took me to a room near the front of her home that looked as if someone was currently using it as a sleeping room.
I was concerned that anyone would sleep here because less than 6 feet from the bed was an immense area of black, moldy, smelly drywall. I asked if anyone was sleeping in this room. It turns out that this was her temporary bedroom. Helen had lost her husband 2 years prior and couldn’t bring herself to sleep in the master bedroom yet. I ask her how long has the wall been like that? She told me at least a couple months, but from my experience, the mold had been there a lot longer than that.
Mold doesn’t just “happen” in your walls. It means that water is getting in or moisture is being trapped.
Helen was still mourning the loss of her husband of 52 years. He had taken care of all the maintenance of their home and she was at a loss for what to do. All I could think was, “I have to get her out of this room”. She was not ready to move back into the master bedroom as it held too many memories. So, with her permission, I moved the entire bedroom suite to the living room of the house, and counseled her to stay out of the other room completely and leave the door shut until we could clean up the problem. I shared with her that the kind of mold and mildew in that room causes a lot of health issues for others and I knew that an 8o-year-old didn’t need the exposure.
Helen’s roof needed to be replaced. Tree debris left on the roof through too many of Oregon’s winter-spring combinations had caused irreversible damage. The felt paper under the shakes had rotted from the retained moisture caused by the debris. The next step was to get that rotted sheetrock out of the room and dry the interior wall out, re-insulate, sheet rock, and paint.
We served her, and in the end, I came back over and moved her bedroom set back into her newly finished bedroom. Helen smiled, gave me a hug and said, “Thank you Patrick.”
Top Quality Cedar Shakes, direct from Canada to Portland
It may have gone unnoticed by most, but this morning another super sized load of freshly milled and preserved shakes rolled into Portland from Canada. These were not your run of the mill cedar shakes, the kind you can buy anywhere. These are not the kind of shakes the builders used on your home that end up needing constant attention and care. At Roof Life of Oregon, we think a custom ordered shake is the best way to start a re-roofing project. You get the best wood designed just for you.
These shakes are milled for you per the request of Patrick D. Morin at Roof Life of Oregon. All of them are 100% clear vertical grain and edge trimmed, all of the highest caliber. Then they are pressure treated and put through a “fixing process” that sets the preservative and gives you one of the lowest maintenance roofs in Portland.
The tree that provided the raw material took 100-200 years to grow, and then 50 years to harvest. Loggers bring the cedar down when harvesting spruce, hemlock, and fir - species of lumber mostly used in the building of homes. When these big giants are found as “downed” or “dead”, they are cut into mill/usable sizes. Only then, can you have a chance to purchase what is truly considered the best roofing material in the industry. If the loggers didn’t bring the dead fall down, the cedar would just rot in the woods. That would be a shame!
Just look at all the good that happens when you choose to use cedar roofing. You increase your insulation by 50%. It’s gorgeous and makes your home and buildings look better; a renewable resource with vast reserves. Cedar’s carbon footprint is the smallest of all roofing material. It’s affordable and if put together with the right components, it will last 30-50 years. (The right components include decades of experience plus Feltex underlayment, stainless steel fasteners, lead pipe flashings, and correct ventilation)
Let us know if we can help you with your new roof. Call Roof Life of Oregon at 503-925-0125.
5 Most Commonly Asked Questions to our Roof Maintenance Crews
Q. How long until the treatment starts to work (WPC-R5)??
A. 3-4 months of rain will thoroughly clean the moss and fungal growth off of the wood.
Q. What kind of shakes do you use: good, best, better?
A. We use the absolute best I can find. 80% twin pack, 100% vertical grain premium shakes.
Q. Will this treatment hurt my dog, cat or plants?
A. All of our treatments are non-toxic and will not harm you, your animals, or your plants.
Q. Is this treatment toxic?
A. NO! Sodium silicate is a PH changer, and by changing the PH, the moss growth must exit.
Q. What is the best way to maintain my roof…clean it with pressure washing or use the WPC-R5?
A. The absolute best way to maintain your shake roof is to use an air compressor blower to rid the roof of tree debris, and then to use a self cleaning 5yr preservative that is non-toxic. That’s WPC-R5
Why is My Roof so Ugly?
You should start looking at roof-tops as you drive through your neighborhood. (Hey, I do it all the time!)
Some homes sit under trees and others sit in the open. Some roofs are taken care of and some are neglected. Some cedar roofs have a light ash grey appearance (nice and healthy!) and some have a pinkish reddish appearance.
Some cedar roofs look repaired for only a short time as the new repairs blend in. Others have a permanent “repaired” look and a reddish pink hue.
Let’s talk about that pink roof.
I believe a homeowner should ask three questions of their roof maintenance company.
- Will my roof look good ?
- Will it work right?
- Will it last longer?
Asking a few questions about the future appearance of your roof, could save you thousands of dollars and a lot of embarrassment.
Once you Stain your Roof, you’re stuck with the result!
Once your roof is cleaned, repaired, and treated with a stain, you’re pretty much stuck with the end result for a long time. Roofs that get stained must be pressure washed; this causes undue stress to your wood roof. Now you’re in for more frequent and costly repairs in the future.
The repairs (those brand new replacement shakes) are then stained, but since they are new they only get coated while the original aged shakes soak up the preservative stain. For the first six months, everything looks uniform but then the stain comes off the repaired shakes and you have a permanently marked roof.
This is very frustrating when your home faces a southwest direction because most of the repairs will be front and center for all to see!
Remember that your shake roof was put on your home to enhance the appearance, not to look like a life long repair depot. The time of reddish, pinkish stained roofs needs to come to a close in Portland.
How do you get your exterior painting scheme to coordinate with a reddish, pinkish roof?
Why We Don’t Pressure-Wash Cedar Roofs
If you have Roof Life of Oregon take care of your roof, we won’t need to pressure wash it! This will save you a lot of money on repairs and increase the life expectancy of your roof. We will treat it with a self cleaning five year preservative that allows the color of your roof to be its natural light ash grey. In addition it will allow all the repairs to blend in permanently and go with any paint color scheme you chose for your home.
Why do they use a color stain anyway? Hmmm!