San Fernando Valley
Roofers in the San Fernando Valley
Heat is what uses up a Valley roof. Shingle on the postwar tracts bakes until the granules go and the tabs curl, and the flat addition on the side of the house ponds and splits. We look at the roof and up in the attic, and the written quote costs nothing.
Free, and there is no obligation to go ahead.
- Free roof inspection
We come out, get on the roof, and tell you what we find.
- The price in writing
A written quote before anyone starts, with nothing to sign on the spot.
- Licensed roofers
Our roofer who comes out holds a current California license.
- Across Los Angeles County
From the Valley and the foothills to the Westside and the South Bay.
Most of the Valley floor went up in the twenty years after the war, one story, under low-pitched shingle roofs running long and plain. On those houses the sun does the damage, and the attic underneath runs hotter still. Describe what your roof is doing and we will come and see it.
- Housing stockPostwar tracts on low-pitched composition, most on a second covering, with a flat addition on the side
- Typical hereComp re-roof $9,000 to $25,000
- Watch forSun-baked shingle, and the flat addition on the side of the house
What the Valley's housing means for your roof
Most of the floor was built once, quickly, in the twenty years after the war. Panorama City is the clearest case. The Los Angeles Conservancy records that Fritz Burns and Associates developed it in the late 1940s for Kaiser Homes, owned by Henry J. Kaiser, on a master plan calling for over 4,000 houses, with components pre-milled at a factory near LAX, and a population of 20,000 by the early 1950s. Ranch and Minimal Traditional, single story, low-pitched gable and hip roofs running long and plain. Van Nuys, Reseda, Canoga Park, Arleta, North Hills and Winnetka repeat that street after street, and the median year built for City of Los Angeles housing is 1965 in American Community Survey table B25037, so most of these houses are on a second or third covering.
What all of it has in common is a lot of roof pointed straight up at the sun. NASA's ECOSTRESS instrument measured peak land surface temperature in the San Fernando Valley at 128.3 degrees on August 14, 2020. That is the number the covering lives at, not the air temperature on the news. Asphalt shingle ages by heat here more than by rain: granules let go, the mat goes brittle, corners curl, and the sealant strip that holds the tabs down softens every summer until it stops re-sealing. The attic below runs hotter again, and on most of these tracts the heating and air ducts are up there in it. A re-roof is when the vents get cut, so it is the one moment ventilation gets sized properly.
The second Valley pattern is the low-slope piece bolted onto a pitched house. Patio covers, carports, converted garages, the den added across the back in 1968, the occasional flat-roofed contemporary. Those sections are a separate trade from the shingle above them, and they are where ponding, split seams and a tired cap sheet turn up. A coating is a reasonable answer on a sound low-slope deck and a poor one on a wet deck.
Then there is the 1990s. The Northridge earthquake hit the middle of the Valley at magnitude 6.7 on January 17, 1994, and the US Geological Survey puts the property damage at about $40 billion. A great deal of Valley housing was repaired and re-covered in the years that followed, and a shingle sold as a thirty-year product in 1996 has run its number out. Nothing dramatic has to happen for it to start letting water in. More of that is on the roof replacement page.
What roof work costs in the San Fernando Valley
Estimate ranges for Los Angeles County, not quotes.
- Small repair (slipped shingles, resealing a vent, clearing a drain): roughly $400 to $900.
- Single-source leak (chimney or skylight flashing, a localized shingle repair, a flat-roof seam): roughly $800 to $2,500.
- Composition shingle replacement: roughly $9,000 to $25,000.
- Flat or low-slope (TPO, modified bitumen, cap sheet): roughly $12,000 to $30,000.
- Tile lift and relay, where a house has tile: roughly $12,000 to $30,000.
- Solar panel removal and reinstall: roughly $4,000 to $10,000, on top of the roof itself.
The Valley floor sits in the lower half of the shingle range more often than the hillsides do. One story, plain gable and hip shapes, and a driveway or an alley for the dumpster. What moves a floor quote up is the low-slope section on the side of the house, and a deck that turns out to be soft once the covering is off. What moves a hillside quote up is access. The roofing costs page breaks the rest of it down.
Common questions about roofing in the San Fernando Valley
My roof is only a few years old. Why is the upstairs still unbearable?
Usually the attic, not the covering. On a Valley tract the ducts run through an attic sitting under a surface ECOSTRESS clocked at 128.3 degrees in August 2020, and if the intake at the eave is blocked or was never big enough, the hot air has nowhere to leave. Net free area at the eave is the part that gets missed, because the exhaust up top is easy to see and the intake underneath is not. It is worth pricing the attic work at the same time as the roof, while the covering is off and the vents can be cut properly.
Get a Valley roof looked at
Tell us the street and how the roof has been behaving, and we will book a visit. Next door we cover Glendale over the Verdugo line and the Hollywood Hills on the other side of the crest.
The offer
$500 off a new roof, 10% off any repair
Send your request online from this page and the offer is attached, with nothing to remember.
- We get on the roof, and into the attic if that is where the answer is
- You get photographs of whatever we find
- The price in writing, with nothing to sign on the spot
Tell us what is going on
A description is enough to start. We will come out, look at the roof properly, and give you the price in writing.