100 Years of Roofing Technology: A Primer

So I'm having my roof replaced. The current roof loses large swathes of itself every winter when the winds come howling up the Fraser Valley and Blaine is right smack in the way. Fortunately, there is more roof underneath each missing swath so it hasn't really been an issue, but at some point, you just have to bite the bullet.

Well, turns out to be an $18,000 bullet. No, that isn't a typo. The forthcoming pictures will show my house to have a ridiculously steep roof. The one time I climbed on it I thought I was going to die, and I'm not even the slightest bit scared of heights. (If you knew me when I was younger, stop laughing. I grew out of it.)

As a related aside, anyone know how many layers of roofing you are legally allowed to put on your roof before you have to tear it down and start over? Yes, the correct answer is three.

Another related aside. How many roofs (rooves or is that just a Tolkienism) might a house that was built 102 years ago have. Let's see. Figure 20 years per roof, 102/20 is a little over five so we'll go with five.

Hah, hah. Wrong answer. I have six. Six complete rooves. Including what are probably (using the math from above) the original cedar shakes. My contractor told me that he had pulled twenty different colored composite shingles from the roof which means that not only were there six complete rooves, they had been patched with different colored shingles (or one of the rooves was made up of a variety of colors. I just thought of that).

So theoretically, to relate this post back to its title, I could analyze each layer of roofing, assuming a twenty or so year spread between layers, and I could tell something about the civilization that developed that composite shingle. Or I could go to Wikipedia.

Addendum: Turns out (according to the interweb) that cedar shakes can last thirty to forty years if properly installed and maintained. I was thinking when I read the first part that I should quickly call and see if I can switch to cedar shakes, then I read the second part and there is no way I am going up on that roof, ever, to do any maintenance. Whatever that consists of. That also throws my math way off, because that means that each of those composite shingle rooves only lasted, on average, twelve years. That doesn't bode well. I'd better move as soon as I finish the roof.