LESLIE: Next up, we’ve got Ray in North Carolina who’s dealing with a roofing problem and wants to know what to ask roofing contractor. Tell us what’s going on at your money pit.
RAY: Make a long story short, I’m getting a new roof put on tomorrow, so I wanted to find out what questions to ask roofing contractor. I’ve already asked a lot, as you can imagine. But what is occurring right now is that I have very rotten fascia boards, if I’m pronouncing it correctly. And the gutters seem to leak a little bit, so I’m concerned. It seems to be two separate entities but when they put the roof on, what do I need to ask and what should I be looking for? This is – just so you know, it’s a – I believe it’s called a dimensional roof. You know, it’s kind of the upgraded dimensional shingles.
TOM: It’s a dimensional shingle. OK. Well, first of all, the first thing I’d check is the weather report; let’s make sure we’re not running into a lot of rain.
RAY: Yeah. Luckily, we’re in good shape on that end.
TOM: Alright, good. Good. Check. That’s good.
Now, next, are they taking off the old layer or are they putting a second layer?
RAY: Correct.
TOM: They’re taking it off. Good. That’s good.
So, what do you need to ask roofing contractor? Well, first of all, you want to ask them how they plan to dispose of the old shingles. I mean the right thing to do here is to put tarps around your house so that when they throw the shingles off the roof, you don’t end up with a million little pieces of this. So get their sort of plan and their cleanup plan for this.
In terms of that fascia, now that’s not uncommon. And typically, what happens is the gutters back up a little bit over the years and the water gets up there and it saturates against that fascia and it rots it out. Now is the time, however, to replace that. To do that, though, you need to take the gutters down, obviously.
RAY: Exactly. And my biggest question is is that I’ve heard various things. Basically, the roofer is saying it’s a separate situation. “We’ll do the roof first” – because it’s stupid to mess with the gutters, as far as he’s concerned – “because if you put new gutters up or whatever you do, it’s going to create a mess. So let’s do the roof first and then address the fascia and the gutters second.” Is that – does that sound proper?
TOM: It’s fine. You could do it all at once or you could do it separately.
RAY: Gotcha.
TOM: It just – one doesn’t affect the other. You can put the roof on with the old gutters or the new gutters. But one more thing I’m going to suggest to you and that is instead of putting wood back up as a fascia, take a look at a product called AZEK – A-Z-E-K.
RAY: A-Z-E-K?
TOM: A-Z-E-K, right.
RAY: OK.
TOM: It’s an extruded PVC material. It’s air-entrained so it kind of looks like it has sort of a wood structure to it but it’s made of PVC. So it doesn’t rot, bugs won’t eat it and you’ll never have to deal with this again. And you can paint it.
RAY: And if they put it up properly, it should last, so to speak, forever?
TOM: Forever, exactly.
RAY: Very good. Well, that’s a good idea.
TOM: You’re welcome, Ray. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
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