What on your roof is nearing the end, and what is fine

The parts of a roof do not age together. On a Coon Rapids split-entry the shingle may be ten years old, the flashing thirty, and the soffit vents original to the house. Enter when the house was built and what has been replaced, and it will sort the parts by where they stand.

This is a starting point for looking, not a diagnosis. It compares ages to the service lives roofers generally expect. Here, a roof over a well-vented attic can beat the range comfortably, and one that grows an ice dam every winter can fall well short of it. The calendar is the least of the three factors.

This page runs entirely on your own screen. Nothing is sent and nothing is stored.

Enter the house, then mark what has been done

When was the house built? What is on the roof now?

What has already been replaced?

Keep a row at Original if the part was never replaced, or if a previous owner may have done it and you have nothing on paper. Unknown is an honest answer and the tool treats it as one.

Roof covering Flashing at walls, valleys and penetrations Underlayment and ice-and-water shield Gutters and downspouts Attic ventilation Skylights (if you have them) Chimney crown, cap and masonry (if you have them) Fascia and soffit Siding or exterior cladding Window seals

A roof almost never quits in the middle. It quits at the transitions. Which is why flashing, not shingle, is the item most worth knowing the age of.

Tap to enlarge

1 Ridge caps. Fatigued by an annual swing few other climates ask of a roof.
2 The field. Snow load and age together, not one or the other.
3 Valleys. Meltwater runs under the snowpack here, out of sight.
4 Flashing. The chimney, and where a lower roof meets a wall.
5 The vent boot. Cold makes the rubber brittle, then a thaw opens the crack.
6 Eaves and ice dams. Ice builds at the edge wherever attic heat is escaping.

Why the shingle date is not the roof date

A second layer laid over the first leaves the original underlayment in place beneath both. The surface is new; the membrane under it is as old as the house. That is why this page asks about underlayment as its own line, and why the truthful answer on a lot of houses is that the last full strip-down happened before anyone now living there moved in.

The same goes for flashing at the chimney and the walls. Sealing what is there is quicker than replacing it, and it is common enough that a five-year-old roof can be sitting on flashing from the seventies. When someone says the roof is recent, ask whether the metal is.

Use this page

Reproduce or link to this freely, crediting tenlakesroofing.com. If it saves a homeowner in the north metro from replacing a roof that only needed its flashing redone, that is what it is for.

If quotes are already in hand, the quote comparison will line up three of them item by item.