What the job actually costs

The five things that actually move the number

Homeowners tend to shop by shingle brand, which is the smallest variable on the page. What really sets the price is this.

Pitch. A roof steep enough to need staging and harnesses costs more per square than a walkable one, and it is not a small difference.

Layers. Tearing off one layer and tearing off three are different jobs with different disposal costs. A quote should say which it assumes.

Complexity. Valleys, dormers, chimneys, skylights and changes of plane all take time and all add places to leak. Two houses with identical square footage can be thousands apart because one is a simple gable and the other has six intersections.

Decking. Nobody knows until the roof is off. See below.

Underlayment and flashing. Basic felt or synthetic. Ice and water membrane in valleys and around penetrations or not. New flashing or reuse the old. These are the quiet lines where cheap quotes get cheap.

The decking line

Write it into the contract. What a replacement sheet costs fitted, and how many are expected. Not a lump sum, not a promise to be reasonable. A rate.

Decking surprises are the most common source of bad feeling on a roof job, and they are entirely avoidable as a dispute even though they are not avoidable as a cost. If the rate is agreed in advance, eight bad sheets is arithmetic. If it is not, it is a conversation you are having on the phone on a Tuesday morning while your house is open.

Where the insurance money actually sits

If your policy is replacement cost, the insurer usually pays in two parts. The first payment is the actual cash value, which is the replacement cost minus depreciation. The remainder, called recoverable depreciation, is released once the work has been done and you have sent in the final invoice.

Two things follow. If you take the first check and do not do the work, you have left the second payment behind permanently. And the deductible comes out of your side, always, which is the whole reason the deductible law exists.

Read your declarations page for whether you are on replacement cost or actual cash value, and for what the wind and hail deductible is, which is often different from the standard one.

No license means the paper matters more

Texas does not license roofing contractors. There is no state register, no number to check, no board that will hear a complaint about workmanship. That is simply the situation, and it changes what you should ask for.

Get an address in this county rather than a post box. Get the scope in writing with the five items above broken out. Get the warranty terms on both product and labor, in writing, with the company name on them. Ask who is actually doing the work, because a lot of roofing here is subcontracted and the crew is not always the company on the truck. Ask for proof of liability coverage and check the dates on it.

And take the time. A storm brings a lot of out of county trucks into Waco for a few weeks, and the pressure to sign today is the single clearest signal to wait until tomorrow. If somebody knocked on your door and you signed, you have three business days to undo it.