Replacing the step flashing could save your roof replacement from leaks
Posted by Alan Franca on Fri, May 06, 2011 @ 05:20 PM
What is the purpose of replacing your home roof?
Well, the first reason is that it could be that the lifetime of your house roof has expired; second reason is that it could have gotten damaged during a storm; or the third one, because it is leaking.
Either way, you must consider one very important thing when you decide to contract a roofing company to get your house roof replaced, you should get the step flashing replaced as well.
Why should the step flashing be replaced? Because if the roofing contractor does not replace the step flashing, over the years (with all the seasons, especially the winter one) the water can accumulate and cause water to leak at your roof.
And what is a step flashing? It is a piece of sheet metal used to flash wall, around chimneys, dormers, they are projections along the slop of a roof. Each piece is overlapped and stepped up the vertical wall as you can see on this picture.
Well, some roofing contractors do not replace the step flashing when they strip the existing roofing. Why not? Because to do that you also need to strip the existing product on the house’s wall (wood siding, vinyl siding etc) and that means more work, more time, more materials.
I will cite an example for you; in this particular roofing replacement job we were working on, all the exterior walls had stucco siding. Stucco siding is very difficult to strip because once you pull the stucco from the wall, all the exterior plywood will come out too, which means that the studs will be visible.
So in this case, we snapped a line to cut the stucco and after we pull the stucco out, new plywood were installed and we could also run the Ice and Water Shield (vapor barrier) two feet up on the wall for better protection. To repair the stucco section that we stripped off, we used James Hardie Fiber Cement Vertical Panel or 4 x 8 sheets with stucco finish siding (see picture above).
Most roof manufactures offer lifetime warranty on their roof shingle products, so why not replace the step flashing and have your roofing replacement project done right?
I am sure you will be happy to know that the roofing contractor got it done the right way.
Contact us at Franca Services today for your free roofing consultation, and let us help you spend less time maintaining your home’s exterior, so you can spend more time enjoying it.
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