Roof replacement and storm repair across Montgomery County, MD

Drive up Georgia Avenue or out I-270 and the building eras change every few miles. Close to the District line, in Kensington, Garrett Park and the older parts of Silver Spring, you find 1920s to 1950s colonials, Cape Cods and the occasional Sears kit home with steep gables and small dormers. Past the Beltway, Wheaton, Aspen Hill and Olney fill in with 1960s ramblers and split-levels on broad, low-pitched roofs.

Further north and west, Germantown, Clarksburg and Montgomery Village are mostly townhouse communities and single-family subdivisions from the 1980s to the 2000s. Those roofs started out as builder-grade three-tab or early architectural shingles, and many are on their first or second replacement cycle now. Potomac adds large custom homes with complicated hip roofs, cedar shakes, and some natural or synthetic slate.

The county keeps a heavy canopy of oaks, tulip poplars and maples, and those trees are behind a large share of our emergency calls. A summer thunderstorm line that crosses the Potomac near Great Falls can drop limbs from Bethesda to Burtonsville in under an hour. We tarp punctured decking the same day, then come back to replace broken rafters, sheathing and shingles once the tree debris is cleared.

Wind is the other repeat offender. Ramblers with long, exposed eaves lose tabs along the rake edges, and older townhouse rows shed shingles at the ridge where the original nails were driven too high. For damage after a derecho-style wind event or a tropical remnant, our notes on storm damage roof repair explain how we document it for an adjuster.

Townhouse communities in Germantown, Gaithersburg and Montgomery Village almost always have architectural guidelines that cover shingle color and sometimes the product line. We send the HOA the product sheet and a physical color sample before a crew is scheduled, because one odd unit in a row stands out for the life of the roof. Single-family subdivisions with active HOAs often want the same paperwork.

Permits for a reroof generally go through the county permit office, though Rockville, Gaithersburg and a few smaller municipalities run their own building permits inside their limits. We check which office covers the address and pull the permit before tear-off. Takoma Park's historic district adds historic review for visible changes, which we explain on our Takoma Park roofing page.

On a typical rambler or colonial we strip to the boards, replace soft or delaminated sheathing, then lay ice and water membrane along the eaves, valleys and around every penetration. Synthetic underlayment covers the rest of the deck. We bend new step flashing at each sidewall, swap out cracked pipe boots, and cut in a ridge vent where the attic has enough soffit intake to feed it.

Gutters are the piece people forget. Plenty of 1960s and 1970s homes still carry 5-inch gutters with leaky end caps and downspouts dumping against the foundation. If a new shingle roof is going on, that's the cheapest moment to move to 6-inch seamless gutters with larger downspouts, since the fascia is already exposed.

• Tear-off to the deck, with soft boards replaced on the spot
• Ice and water membrane at eaves, valleys and penetrations
• New step flashing, pipe boots and drip edge
• Ridge vent sized to the soffit intake below it