More Than Just a Pretty Hat for Your Home in Raleigh, NC

Your home’s roof plays an integral role in the overall appearance of your house. Its color may complement the paint or stain that covers the rest of the structure. Its dark shade may make it almost invisible when you take in the grandeur of your home from the street level. It may act like a hat, protecting you from the elements, but your roof is actually much more complicated than a simple pretty cover for your home.

If you ever need one of the many different styles of replacement roofs available, you’ll discover all that goes into a new roof. It often requires more than just a new layer of shingles. And you need an expert in replacement roofs to inspect your current roof before you even engage in the process of replacing it.

The Outer-Most Layer of Your Roof

A complete roof system for original roofs or replacement roofs includes so much more than the shingles. The shingles are nothing more than the temporary outer layer, like the epidermis of your skin. It protects you while it’s there, but it’s meant to be sloughed off after a while. Shingles may last 15 years or more, but eventually they need to be “sloughed off” and replaced with a fresh layer of protection. You can choose from many styles and types of shingles, but that’s a topic that calls for its own blog post!

It All Starts with the Foundation

Beneath the shingles lies a multi-layer structure that continues to protect your house from leaks and weather for as long as you care for it. The foundation for most roofs is a full deck that covers your roof from gutter to gutter. This wooden foundation comes in several varieties:

• CDX plywood is a common roof foundation. The CDX type is the most often recommended, but even this high-quality plywood tends to warp in a humid climate.
• Orient strand board (OSB) is the best roof foundation and the one Triangle’s Trusted Roofing Company uses. OSB holds up much better than plywood and is more environmentally friendly. We don’t believe in cutting corners when it comes to protecting the investment and safety of your home.
• Tongue and groove sheets are made of better wood than plywood, but they don’t hold up well in the Eastern North Carolina weather and weather events.

What Makes up Replacement Roofs

In between the shingles and the deck are many other components that work together to protect your home. For replacement roofs, call on a residential roofer who understands each component and how it interacts with the other pieces that make up your roof, including:

• Metal drip edge, to direct water to your gutters and drain spouts.
• Underlayment, which acts as the last line of defense against the elements
• Ice and water barrier, a waterproof membrane used to protect sensitive areas like edges and intersections from ice and rain
• Starter shingle layer, made of asphalt, which further protects your roof
• Off-ridge exhaust vent, to allow humid air to escape from your attic and increase ventilation
• Soil stack flashing, to protect the base of vertical piping — because water gets into any unprotected spot
• Ridge venting, which is a horizontal vent running along the peak of your roof
• Ridge cap shingle protection, or the extra shingles placed at ridges and other spots that may be particularly vulnerable

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