LESLIE: Now we’ve got Rosemarie in Pennsylvania who is dealing with a roofing-shingle issue. Tell us what’s going on.
ROSEMARIE: We have an issue on our roof. It is a French Normandy-style home with a very high roof pitch.
TOM: OK.
ROSEMARIE: And what we have on there right now is an IKO and it’s supposed to hold up to 55 to 75-mile-an-hour winds. However, they’re blowing off. And we’re not sure – we bought the home – it was a custom home. We bought it, we’ve been in it 90 days today and it’s the second time in 90 days that they have blown off.
TOM: Wow. So this roof was put on in the winter?
ROSEMARIE: No, this roof was put on, we believe, in the spring. It was put on in 2005.
TOM: Oh, so it’s been on for several years.
ROSEMARIE: It has. And we’ve had a 10×10 blow off.
TOM: Wow.
ROSEMARIE: We’re on a ridge; we sit at the top of a ridge between two mountain ranges. And the wind whips up but our roof is not holding.
TOM: Well, I hope you’ve got good homeowners insurance.
ROSEMARIE: Well, we do but – however, the issue is the original, 25-year warranty did not carry over to us as the new owners.
TOM: Right. So you’re stuck with what you’re stuck with and unfortunately, there’s only two things you can do here: you can either continue to patch what you have or you could consider replacing the entire roof.
You know, because it’s such a big area, it’s going to be difficult to stop it from doing what it’s doing. If it was just a small area or a few shingles, we’d tell you to add some asphalt cement underneath the shingle tabs.
ROSEMARIE: OK.
TOM: But since it’s a massive area like that, my concern is that it’s just going to continue to keep happening. This particular roof is just not standing up well to the winds. The one shingle that I’m familiar with that, I think, is – will stand up to over 100 miles an hour is Owens Corning.
LESLIE: It’s an Owens Corning, yeah.
TOM: They have a wind-resistant shingle product that is very, very good. But it’s kind of hard to repair what you have now, because the problem is that the adhesion on the shingle tab is just not working.
ROSEMARIE: Well, that’s what – we were trying to get your opinion – if it were just better, as the new owners, to go ahead and put a shingle on there that’s going to hold up to 110 to 130-mile winds.
TOM: Yeah. I think so, for the long haul. It’s probably what you’re going to be up against.
ROSEMARIE: OK. Well, that’s what we were looking for.
TOM: I wonder if you can get part of this financed by your insurance company. If you’ve had that kind of damage, they may pay for replacement instead of repair so they don’t have to keep coming back.
ROSEMARIE: Right. We have a great insurance company that is willing to work with us. It was not – the previous owner, I guess, only had one little issue in the years that they owned it. But in 90 days, like I said, we’ve had 2.
TOM: Yeah.
ROSEMARIE: And the last one, the winds only got up to, I think, 50 miles an hour but they went everywhere.
TOM: Well, it’s like pulling a thread. Once you get going, you never know how far it’s going to go.
ROSEMARIE: Exactly. Exactly.
TOM: Right.
ROSEMARIE: And with the wind and the rain and the snow that we’d had this past winter, it just – something needs to be done with us going into the spring now, so …
TOM: Yeah. And I would probably tell you to take off the original roof and not just put a second layer on it.
ROSEMARIE: Oh, OK. OK.
TOM: So that you have a really good …
LESLIE: So that you know that the adhesion’s working.
TOM: To cure adhesion, yeah. That’s right. Mm-hmm.
ROSEMARIE: OK. Great. Well, that’s what we wanted to know and I thank you very much.
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