A quarry borough on the Swatara, older than almost everything around it, with a building stock that shows where the stone came from.
What Hummelstown roofs are dealing with
Brownstone and brick in the centre, on lots laid out long before anyone needed to park a truck beside the house.
The trim, the cornices and the porch roofs are where the labour goes on these houses — the main slope is the simple part.
A quarry borough, and the stone shows. Brownstone and brick in the centre on lots laid out before anyone needed to park beside the house, with deep cornices, porch roofs running into walls, and trim details that take real time to flash properly.
Not sure how much life is left up there? The roof age check walks the envelope part by part — which matters more here than a single number, because on metal the panel and the things holding it down age on different clocks.
Covering Hershey, Harrisburg, Elizabethtown and the rest of Hummelstown.
- 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?
When the work happens in Hummelstown
The county window, without complication. What does shape the timing is tree cover: work under a mature canopy is easier once the leaves are down, and the valleys are easier to assess then too.
What moves the price in Hummelstown
The labour is in the edges rather than in the field. Every porch roof that dies into a wall, every cornice return, every change of plane is a place where two materials meet and someone has to decide how. Ask how those are being handled; the answer separates two quotes faster than the shingle brand does.
On housing this old the price is settled underneath rather than on top. Five questions get there faster than comparing product brands, and if two or three quotes are already in hand, the quote comparison checklist puts them side by side:
- What is on the roof now, and does all of it have to come off?
- Is the sheathing solid, or spaced boards that need a new surface first?
- What is the per-sheet rate for decking, agreed before the roof is opened?
- Is the back wing specified separately from the front slope?
- Where does the snow go when it lets go, and what sits under that eave?
The work
Before you call anyone in Hummelstown
A few questions come up on nearly every property in this valley, and the answers do not change from one borough to the next, so they are written once, in the guides — written for a market where the covering is as likely to be metal as shingle:
Why roofs struggle here
Six failures account for most of what gets reported in these three counties, and each one has its own page. Where a stain shows up inside is rarely below where the water came in.