What on your roofs is due, building by building

A roof is a set of parts on different clocks, and on a valley property with four roofs of four ages it is four sets of clocks. Tell it when the house was built, what covers it, and what has been done, and it will show where each part sits.

This is not a diagnosis and not a prediction. It compares ages to the service lives roofers generally expect. A standing-seam panel can outlast the range by decades; the screws holding an old barn roof rarely do. What is up there and how it was fastened matter more than the calendar.

This works in your browser and stops there. Nothing is submitted or stored.

Check the roof, part by part

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

What has already been replaced?

Leave a row as Original if that part has never been replaced, or if a previous owner may have done it and nothing came with the deed. On a farm property with four roofs, not knowing is ordinary.

The covering itself Fasteners and washers, on exposed-fastener metal Flashings at walls, chimneys and transitions Drip edge and valley metal Underlayment The decking Gutters and the roof edge Skylights and other openings (if applicable)

Six places a roof gives way in this valley. On most of them the covering is not what failed. Which is why the fasteners, the flashings and the closures are worth knowing the age of, not just the panels.

Tap to enlarge

1 The ridge cap. On metal it is a separate piece with closures under it. Blown snow finds the joint that was never closed.
2 The seams. A standing-seam roof lives at its seams and clips, not at its surface. The panel outlasts what holds it.
3 The valley. One channel taking what two slopes shed, and on the north side holding snow long after the field is clear.
4 Where the ell meets the wall. A lower wing dying into the main house. Two roofs, one wall, and nobody sure whose seam it is.
5 The fasteners. Exposed screws through the panel, each with a rubber washer. The washers age; the screws work loose.
6 The eave. Drip edge, gutter, and the question every metal roof asks: where does a slab of snow go when it lets go?

Why a metal panel can be the youngest thing on an old roof

A re-roof here usually swaps the covering and keeps what surrounds it: flashings sealed rather than rebuilt, closures reused, screws left in the old holes. The panel resets; the junctions and the fasteners do not. That is why this page asks about the fasteners and the hardware separately, and why the honest answer for many properties is that nobody knows, because the record left with a previous owner.

The same applies in reverse. A barn can carry young panels over rusted screws and split washers, and the first stain on the hay will read as panel failure to everyone who does not climb. If a report blames the covering without mentioning the fasteners, ask what those looked like.

Use this page

This tool may be reproduced or linked to freely, crediting susquehannaroofing.com. If it helps someone in the valley see that the house roof is fine and the barn roof is not, it has done what it is for.

Holding quotes already? The quote comparison sets three of them side by side, row for row.