Homeowners often call us and say, “I have this horrible moss on my roof. Can you make it look nicer?” We always inspect the roof to evaluate what, if anything, can be done. We will never do anything to your roof to move it backward. But not all companies work that way.
There are times when cleaning a roof will actually take years off of its life. In those scenarios, it’s best to leave it alone. I went out to a customer’s home recently to check it out and saw that the whole back side of the roof had been redone and looked great. I told him we could take care of that moss, no problem.
However, the front side of the roof is much older and the granules on the shingle are almost completely gone. Granules serve two main purposes. They make the house look pretty and give you color variation. And more importantly, they protect the asphalt from the sun. Once the asphalt is exposed, it gets dry and brittle.
This guy’s roof was almost black; it had lost so many granules. I called him up and told him that we couldn’t clean the older part of the roof. He could get a few more years out of it, but I told him not to walk on or touch it.
He asked me what it would cost to replace it, so we went over the cost, and then somewhere over the next week, I got a pretty frustrated call from him. “Hey, I don’t know why you were so quick to condemn that roof. I called another contractor right down the road from you and they cleaned the roof off with no problem.”
My response? You can always find a roofer who’s willing to do the wrong thing to your roof to make some money. And that’s exactly what this company did.
I went back out to look at it and, sure enough, there were almost no granules left. The contractor took the remaining years this customer had left on his roof. He will have to replace in the next year or two. Essentially, he paid money to have his roof move backward.
And if you asked that contractor about a warranty, he’d tell you there isn’t one. We won’t mess with a roof that can’t be helped. If it will move it forward, we’ll clean it, treat the roof, and move you ahead three years. You’ll get a no-leak, no-growth warranty for those three years.
We also use a roof cleaner, not a pressure washer, to clean your roof. I’ve seen pressure washers cut holes in shingles. That’s how strong they are. Our specially made roof cleaners use lower pressure and higher volume to knock 80-90 percent of the moss off. We then follow it up with a treatment. But we will only do it if we can add, not subtract, years to your roof.
Why put money into a roof that you’re not going to get back? Use the right equipment, use an honest company, and make sure your roof moves forward.