Dormer Roof Fried Shingles

Hi

I'm new to the forum and hoping I can get some thoughts about a roof issue I have.

I have an old house in Nova Scotia - about 150 years old - and made of pretty sturdy materials, I think cedar in many places. When I bought it, it was in solid but superficially rather neglected condition. I've done loads of work on it myself; window frame repair, wall repair and wall shingling, installed a new shower room, built a woodshed (real beaut), loads of stuff.

Since buying the house, I've known that the front (north) half of the roof needs reshingling, particularly the dormer which seems to get fried by the sun and blown to hell by noreasters. The back of the house and L are pretty OK. Every major gale takes away more shingle tabs off the dormer. There seems to be no leakage at all into the building which made me think that probably the ice and water shield underneath was keeping it sealed. I spoke to a roofer a couple of years ago and he thought probably it was ok and the steep angle was making the water run off pretty quick. We talked about replacing just the shingles on the dormer but he said it would be difficult to impossible because although the shingles on the rest of the roof are mostly intact they're also rather brittle.

I finally took the plunge and took a closer look today and to my horror found gaps between shingles where the tabs had blown off but no ice and water at all, just wood.

I have no real experience at all of roofing and unfortunately, at least for now (might possibly change in the short term), very little budget.

I'm kind of wondering about my options.

I can't replace the whole north half of the roof, out of the question for now. One thought is to get some roll roofing and just cover the dormer roof, nailing it firmly in place at, say, 9" intervals and protect it with that until I can get a budget to get the whole north half replaced. The other possibility is that the roofer is wrong and a skilled roofer (if they exist around here - not sure) could replace just the dormer roof. Maybe carefully tarred ice and watershield would be a better temporary fix.

As I mentioned, it's a pretty solid place and I think it's a relatively recent issue and I doubt there is structural damage but even if there was I can't fix it now.

Any ideas?

Thanks

It is a bad idea to be replacing a roof in sections. I would do the whole roof at the same time. Roll roofing is viable temporary option.

Hi JoeD

thanks for the thoughts.

Just a couple of other things.

1) Should I try and remove the existing shingles from the dormer? My thought is probably not as I'm very cautious about damaging the rest of the roof which as I mention is pretty fragile. Probably best to remove the existing loose tabs that are serving little purpose and put the rolled roof over that.

2) I'd tend to lay the roll roofing horizontally, working up the roof.

3) Should I plan on using tar to attach the rolled roof or would just roof nails sealed with tar be enough?

Thanks for any further thoughts on things I might have missed - I've not done this before..

cheers

Welcome to the site. How many sq ft on the dormer compared to the rest of that side of the house? Does the dormer meet the roof at the peak or further down the roof?
Is the dormer over finished living space and do you have venting from the soffit to the ridge?

Whether you remove the shingles or not will depend on their condition. Since this is basically a temporary repair, if the shingles are flat I would just go over them. If they are not flat and are curling up at the corners you will need to remove them.

Nail the top edge and tar under the bottom edge then nail it and put a dab of tar over each nail.

Hi

thanks very much for the replies.

The dormer starts about 3' below the apex of the roof of the house. I calculate that the area of the front half of the roof excluding the dormer is about 700 sq ft and the area of the dormer is about 100 sq ft. Although I describe the rest of the roof as fragile, all of the shingles are intact with no missing tabs. It really is just the dormer that's in bad shape. In fact many of the tabs have blown off on the southwest side and it would be very easy just to pull off the remainder to leave a relatively flat surface with just the upper part of the shingles that is nailed to the roof remaining.

The dormer is over the upstairs hallway. This is a very old house and there never has been any ventilation between the soffit and the ridge. In fact there was no ventilation into the roofspace at all when we bought the place so the first summer I put vents into both ends of the main roof and into the L together with cutting a vent from the main roof into the L.

I do actually have some architectural shingles and I'm wondering whether I could shingle rather than use roll roofing in this temporary fix.

Thanks for any thoughts..

You might re-roof the dormer and step out sideways above that to the peak. But while working on anything up there you likely will do more damage to the old roof. If you have water up there without good venting, you my find other problems.

Hi nealtw

thanks for the thoughts. The new piece of roof would have to be woven into the original shingles which are pretty brittle so I think it would probably do more harm than good. Am I right that you think shingling over the existing shingles is a viable option rather than using roll roofing? It would be my preference; I have more than enough packs of architectural shingles to do it (= no cash outlay and my budget is very limited) and it would look a lot better even though the roof is currently black and my packs of shingles are silver gray.

The roof at some point in its history has had water get in at the bottom of the valleys because the wallpaper at end of the upstairs hall by the dormer window has water marks, although it does feel quite dry to the touch now - the main reason why I thought an ice and water shield must be protecting it. The upstairs hall hasn't been decorated for maybe 50+ years and it would be surprising if nobody had ever neglected the place over that time scale. I'm hoping that I've caught this before too much water has got in. We had hurricane Bertha in early August and the occasional downpour since. I've kept a pretty close eye on that roof and my suspicions were only very raised recently - I think after Bertha - by a light coloured band seemingly between 2 shingles - the colour of wood - so I thought I should take a closer look. Still, it may have been getting in and running down the roof boards and into the walls or woodwork so invisible in the upstairs hall.

Fingers crossed!

Pavesa, first off to House Repair Talk!

Now, about your roof...I hate to see you throw good money after bad. If you shingle over the existing and it's a dimensional, it will probably leak again. They are not meant to be laid over. If you think it may be a short period of time before you re roof the front, I would suggest tarping the area with a heavy poly tarp. You can get them in color, even black. My guess, $25.00, and you won't pay for an extra layer of shingles when you roof. Tractor Supply has some 10 mil tarps that are thicker than the blue ones, if you have one in your area.


Just my:2cents:

Oldog's thought are likely worth more than 2 cents.

Hi oldognewtrick

thanks for your welcome to House Repair Talk and also your thoughts on my issue, this is all new to me and I really appreciate the thoughts and suggestions.

By dimensional, I assume you mean there's a thickness to the old shingles on the roof which pushes shingles attached to them out of line. Food for thought, maybe the thing is to remove all the shingles from the dorma section with the exception of a part maybe 8"-9" above the valley so there's an overlap with the existing roof. I guess another way of achieving that would be just to remove all the tabs from the existing shingles on the dormer, leaving just the top half which nailed to the roof. This would be flat and just 1/8" thick and perhaps would be a reasonable surface for attaching new shingles.

I'm personally rather reluctant to go with tarp as I'm sure they must deteriorate much faster than permanent roofing materials. My situation is stressful enough without knowing that there's a clock urgently ticking on raising thousands of $ to get the roof repaired within months. I do plan to get it done as soon as I possibly can in any case but the world is being very fickle at the moment and lots of random stuff is going on that's outside anyone's control.

If venting is questionable you want ice sheild over the lower wall and felt over the rest, bare wood is the way to go. I think oldog will just say to buy 2 or 3 tarps and change as needed for as long as it takes.

Putting a roll roofing material over the old shingles will create another set of problems. Top nailing will compromise the membrane and you won't be any better off than putting a tarp on it. Don't worry about starting a clock ticking on starting repairs, that ships already sailed. Sorry.

You have done a great job describing your place and roof. Any way you could post a photo of the condition. For some reason I see your roof in my mind as really high roof.

I’m up against something similar with a couple different roof problems that the time is growing near to get them fixed before winter and like you the funding isn’t there to do the major correct reroofing job.

I just was wondering what kind of access you have to yours? I don’t enjoy roof work and my plan is to not have to do it again come spring. I have never had luck with the cheap tarps making it thru a winter around here with the cold and winds even covering a wood pile.

My plan on my one roof facet that sounds to be about as old and dried out as yours is to start at the bottom and work up a few rows at a time. Remove, clean up, ice guard then new shingles. That’s on the steep pitch small roof on the main house. And I will be building staging of some sort as I go up.
Half the roof on the garage needs redone and it has rolled roofing on it now that’s 10 years past its expiration date. I want to do tin on it but that’s also waiting and it’s going to get a new layer of rolled roofing.

Hi

I'm attaching photos, I hope it works ok. This is the front, north side of the house and the right side looking at the front is the west, worse side.

neiltw when you talk about ice&water and membrane, I wonder if you think the dormer has walls or are you referring to the walls of the house. The dormer doesn't have walls as you can see from the photos.

I left the photos at high resolution and the zoomed ones show the situation very well at least on my pc but they seem to be compressed on upload, so I don't know how well they'll be seen. I can post them on another host with the link in full detail if needs be.

For some reason a shed roof dormer is what came to mind. Maybe because that's what I am building this week.
Nice looking house.

That's not what I would consider a dormer roof, it's called a gable. I, along with Neal, envisioned a shed roof dormer with walls. I would strongly advise against trying to work on this yourself unless you are a roofer by trade. Gravity always wins.

Hi

sorry about the confusion, I'm a newbie at all this..

Hi bud16415 mine's a one and a half storey house. It's a real pain when funding isn't really there to get the job done properly as you want, you need to get the best from limited resources. We get some awful gales; noreasters in winter that develop into huge blizzards. See this

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saZnpFBVW_U[/ame]

You can imagine the effect of this on 3-tab shingles. And the summer we have tropical storms and hurricanes.

My plan is to try and get a local independent guy to do the actual roof work but be the slave bringing him the roof materials so I can keep a close eye on what he's doing.

Hi

I'd just like check whether it being a gable rather an a dormer matters so far as the suggestions that have been given so far?

Thanks..

I’m glad I asked for photos and what you posted is what I had envisioned except I was picturing a full 2 stories. I know what your winds are like and we get similar winds coming across the great lakes when frozen bringing that artic cold air along.

The way your valleys are woven is how they used to do them here, and makes replacing just part of it tough. I don’t know how you could really seal the valley with any kind of rolled roof except with a lot of mastic and hope for good results. Would also be hard to tarp without going up and over the ridge line and the wind would want to lift it right up.

To do just the gable I would think to reweave it without breaking a lot of shingles he will want to go over at least a few shingles on the main roof and tie it in. in doing that and removing those shingles you can run ice guard down the valley. I don’t know at that point if I would flash the valley or do the weave again. I would say pick out the shingles you want and do it with those and in a year or so do the rest the match will look good even if you take up the new ones on the main roof you are putting down now. I agree if you are not sure about doing it safely bring in someone with the right equipment to stage it up.

Maybe olddog will give us his thoughts on the best way to approach the valley now.