Roof Replacement for Chatham homes and buildings
Roof replacement on an early-1900s Chatham home is a chance to correct details that have been handled piecemeal for decades. A full tear-off exposes the plank decking so split and rotted boards can be replaced, lets us install continuous ice-and-water protection and underlayment, and allows every dormer, valley and chimney to be flashed correctly from the deck up rather than patched from the top down.
Asset Roofing & Chimney replaces steep-slope roofs with architectural asphalt shingles and replaces flat roofs on additions and commercial buildings with membrane. On Chatham homes that still carry slate, we assess the roof and discuss whether to keep and repair it or convert to shingle. Gambrel roofs, hipped foursquare roofs and multi-dormer colonials each take their own detailing, and we plan for it.
Chatham housing
Chatham Borough's housing is predominantly early-1900s through 1930s single-family construction: center-hall colonials, Dutch colonials with gambrel roofs, foursquares and Tudors, with later capes and split-levels on some streets. Roofs are mostly asphalt shingle today, with slate still on some older homes. Nearly every house has a brick chimney, and many have two. The downtown has flat-roofed commercial buildings.
Weather & exposure
Chatham's mature street trees and backyard oaks and maples drop heavy leaf and branch loads onto roofs and keep many of them shaded. Winters are colder and snowier than the Bergen riverfront, with ice dams on homes with older attic insulation. The Passaic River lowlands add humidity, and summer thunderstorms and nor'easters bring wind-driven rain into dormers and chimney flashing.
When replacement is the right call in Chatham
Replace when the shingles are brittle and shedding granules across the whole roof, when leaks appear in several unrelated areas, when the roof has more than one layer, or when ice dam damage has reached the decking. For slate, replacement with shingle makes sense when a large share of the slates are soft or breaking; if only a few are failing, repair by a slater may be the better value.
We inspect the attic first and set expectations about decking repairs. If your home is in an older part of the borough, it is worth confirming with the municipality whether any review applies to visible exterior changes. The job takes one to several days depending on the size and complexity of the roof, with cleanup at the end of each day.
