There are numerous things to consider when replacing and repairing your roof. Making changes to the roof of your house is a very long, labor-intensive, and possibly costly process that involves many decisions and many people. Additionally, when you make the decision to alter the roof of your home, you are committing to making nearly permanent changes to the home. These things all must be kept in mind before even considering getting roof work done.
Probably the very first thing that you should consider is if you even need roof work done at all. There are plenty of roof repairs that you can do yourself if they only require some user-friendly materials or other things that do not require contractors. For example, cleaning or painting a roof does not require a contractor. That is something that you can do yourself. It is the same with cleaning out gutters or even removing and replacing some fractured shingles on the roof.
If this is the case for your roof, then it is not too difficult to search out some resources on how to make minor repairs on your roof by yourself. If you do this, you will save much more money than you would spend by hiring a contractor. And hiring a roofing company to repair a roof is not cheap. Most contractors will charge $3.50-$5 per square foot. The average roof is 1,700 square feet. Doing the math on this, it costs roughly $10,000 to install a completely new roof. This does not include the cost of replacing an old roof or anything else that might need to be done on a roof, as well. Those things should be factored in as well, and when everything is considered, it can get extremely costly to repair and replace a roof. This is why it is suggested that before you consider hiring any roofing contractors, you learn to perform minor repairs on your roof yourself. This will save you much more money.
Questions to Ask Yourself Before Hiring a Contractor
The first thing to keep in mind when hiring a roofing contractor is the price you are willing paying. This is much different than if you are renting a place and you call in the maintenance crew to fix something. Those individuals get paid by the hour and respond to hundreds of calls to work on hundreds of properties daily. Contractors sent in to work on a home are much different. Different ones will have different rates. So before asking any questions to the contractors, you should ask yourself a few:
“How much am I willing to pay?”
“How long do I need these contractors?”
“What kind of work am I paying these contractors to do?”
Before hiring a contractor, or anybody to do anything, for that matter, it is very important to weigh your options. Unless you just have money to throw away, you should always consider how long something will take and how much it will cost. This may appear to sound like common sense, but it is surprising how many people choose not to pay enough attention to this part of the process. Once you answered the necessary questions, for what you want to hire in a contractor fand how money you are willing to spend, you are now ready to prepare questions for the contractors.
Questions to Consider Asking Potential Roofing Contractors
As mentioned previously, roofing contractors have numerous responsibilities when they are at work. There are also numerous details that go into roofing in general, many of which will be mentioned here. So besides the usual “how much do you charge, how long with this project take,” and other basic questions, there are a host of many more specific questions that should be answered if you wish to hire a roofing contractor. Some of these questions may make sense, and some require a bit of explanation. However, they are all very important.
Some of these questions make sense, such as asking the contractors if they are licensed, if they have worker’s compensation insurance, and if they have general liability insurance. It is common sense for a good contracting organization to have these because the work they do can be dangerous, and if the contractors have all of these it means your assets will be protected. There is no real complication with these questions as they do not deal with the roof itself. Other questions, such as asking if the contractors have someone to contact while working, contact info for the company itself, and if they have written estimates are also matters of common sense.
The second set of questions you should have for contractors is if they can remove the old roof if they are going to install drip edge or edge metal when installing the new roof and if they are going to use ladder stabilizers and/or standoffs when to protect the gutters. These questions deal with how these contractors are going to directly affect your roof. Removing the old roof is obvious; it certainly is not ideal to simply lay down shingles on top of an old roof. Many contractors would claim that this can save money, but it will lead to future problems which will cost more money in the future. Drip edge is material that is placed under the shingles and it allows runoff to flow into the gutters instead of behind them. This is very important in preventing water damage. Ladder stabilizers will protect said gutters from being damaged when the contractors climb up to the roof.
The final set of questions involves making sure your neighborhood will not be too affected. Asking what contractors do with refuse material is important for this reason. Asking what they do if there is unsavory weather is also important. You should also ask how the contractors are going to protect the landscaping–and assume that they will do this.
Armed with the information that you will get from contractors by asking these questions, you will have a much easier time in your process of getting your roof replaced.
