In this episode, Daniel explains why we sometimes tell homeowners to leave their roofs alone and not touch the moss. You can always find a contractor willing to do the wrong thing in order to make a quick buck. At Roof Life, we treat your roof like our own, even if that means not making money.
Podcast Transcription: RoofLifeB023-177
Shayla: You are listening to the Roof Life of Oregon podcast and I’m talking with Daniel. Daniel, I want to tell our listeners a little bit about companies that will do anything to your roof to make a dollar. You just told me a little bit about a story, it’s kind of like a warning to homeowners, so tell us a little bit about your recent experience.
Daniel: You know, we go out and look at roofs every day. We have homeowners that call us and say, “I have this horrible moss on my roof. Can you make you it look nicer? Let’s get it off there and keep the moss off.” And so we do. We go out and we look at roofs and we evaluate whether a roof can be done. Can we move it forward or is leaving it alone going to be the best for the house? This is one of those scenarios where we get out and look at the roof, and, honestly, the best thing for this roof is just to leave it alone. So let me build the roof for you.
The whole back side of the house is new. The roof has been redone and looks fantastic and I told him, “Hey, we can take care of the moss on that. It’s great.” However, you’ve got a whole front side of this house that’s much, much older and the granules on this roof are almost completely gone. And so let’s describe a shingle a little bit. It’s fiberglass matte, and then there’s asphalt on it, and then there are granules put onto that. The granules serve two main purposes. One, they make the house look pretty; it gives you all your color varieties and things like that. And they protect the asphalt from the sun. Once the granules come off the roof, the asphalt’s exposed, it gets super dry, really brittle, and if you did it on a scale, the roof dramatically drops off once you get to that stage. This roof was almost black, the granules were so gone. I called the homeowner, it was actually his mom’s house, he was doing the research for her, so I called him up and talked to him about it. He said, well, what do we do with it? I said, well, we can take care of the back. The front, you may have a few years left in it, but you can’t touch it. Don’t walk on it. Don’t mess with it all. He said, well, what’s it going to cost to replace that roof? And I talked to him about it, we went over the cost of it and I said, well, we can do this one section and replace it and it can match the back. I can get almost the exact same material. Somewhere in the conversation back and forth within a couple of days, he calls back and says, “Hey, I don’t know why you were so quick to condemn that roof. I had a contractor right down the road from you come out, and they cleaned the roof off with no problem, so why would you do that?” And my comment to him back was, “You will always find another roofer that’s willing to do the wrong thing to your roof, to make it go back so that they can make money.” And that’s exactly what they did. I went back and looked at the roof and sure enough, they cleaned that roof off, and there are almost no granules. You can always find cheap anywhere and contractors willing to do the wrong thing.
Shayla: So you think the guy lost time? How much time do you think he may be lost off of his roof by cleaning it?
Daniel: He’s probably going to have to replace it very quickly, within the next year. If he took the rest of the granules off, if it’s at that stage, he probably loosened the shingles too, so if we get another one of those big wind storms like we’ve had this winter, we got the snot beat out of us this winter, another one of those big wind storms, he’s going to start losing shingles, just because he weakened the roof. And then if you ask that contractor, “What warranty did you put on the roof after you cleaned it?” “We didn’t put a warranty on that roof. You just asked us to clean it and we cleaned it and you paid us for it.” That homeowner paid them to make the roof go backward.
Shayla: So if Roof Life of Oregon decides that you can clean off a roof, is there a warranty that goes along with that cleaning?
Daniel: There is. So we won’t mess with a roof that can’t be helped. If it can be helped, clean the roof off, and we’ll treat the roof, and move you ahead three years. We guarantee it for those three years- no growth, no leak warranty. If we can’t help the roof, we’ll tell you, leave it alone. You’re going to be best to leave the roof alone. If you’ve got three years, five years, maybe even seven, but we can’t touch it, we’ll tell you that. Why put the money into a roof that you’re not going to get back? This guy literally spent money to make the roof go backward, so he’s going to have to replace it that much sooner.
We use a roof cleaner. The big difference between a roof cleaner and a pressure washer. A lot of guys go up there with a pressure washer. You know, I just did pressure washing on my house this weekend. My son’s graduating, and son my wife said, hey, you’ve got to make it look good, we’re going to have the graduation party, so I was out there on the concrete deck, cleaning everything up. If you take a regular pressure washer, and you get it too close with the wrong tip, you can literally cut a hole in the concrete. That’s how strong they are. Ours is not that. Ours is a roof cleaner. It’s much lower pressure and higher water volume. We’re knocking off 8-90 percent of that moss, and then we let the treatment finish off the rest of it, move you ahead three years. So if you have some contractor out there with a regular pressure washer, I’ve seen it where they’ve cut holes in shingles. It’s the wrong thing to do. Use the right equipment, use the right company, and make the roof go forward.
Shayla: It speaks very highly of the integrity of Roof Life of Oregon that you wouldn’t do something to a roof, just to make money.
Daniel: That’s correct. If it’s not going to move forward, we’re not going to make you move backward. It’s the right thing to do for the roof. It’s the right thing to do for the homeowner. Don’t put money into a roof, when it’s not going to help.
Shayla: Alright. So if you have any questions about anything Daniel spoke about today, you can reach out to the team at Roof Life of Oregon. Thanks, Daniel.