Roofing, gutters and skylights in Berkeley

Above the fault line the streets narrow, the driveways tilt and the lots fall away behind the house. Everything about a roof job there is shaped by access: where a truck can stand, how the tear-off comes down, whether the crew works off the street or off a deck that was never built for pallets of material. We walk that before we price it. In the hill neighborhoods we also expect questions about what the whole assembly is made of rather than just the covering, because the eaves, the valleys and the attic vents matter as much as the surface when a hillside street sets its requirements.

The brown shingle and Craftsman houses that define the middle of the city were built with deep overhangs and exposed rafter tails, and those details are the reason the style looks the way it does. They are also where water does its damage. A gutter hung off the end of an exposed tail puts its load somewhere the builder did not plan for, and once the tail softens the whole run leans. Where the timber is still good we fix into it properly and leave the detail visible. Where it has gone, the carpentry comes first and we say so on the estimate as its own line rather than folding it into the metal.

Down in the flats the fog wins. North-facing slopes carry moss, gutters hold damp litter from redwood and oak through the wet months, and a roof that would dry by mid-morning a few miles inland stays wet all day. Redwood duff is the particular nuisance: it is fine enough to pass most covers and it packs down into a mat that holds water against the metal. Knowing which trees overhang your roof tells us how often it needs clearing, which is a more honest answer than a schedule copied off a chart.