Tool
How much roof have you got left?
Install year gets you a starting point. What the roof is actually doing gets you the answer.
This works out an answer as you change the controls, which needs JavaScript. Without it, the reference section below covers the same ground, and we are happy to talk it through.
What service life actually means
A material has a service life the way a tyre has a tread life: it is a property of the material under normal use, not a promise about a particular roof. Three things move it more than anything else.
- Ventilation
- An attic that cannot exhaust runs hot, and a hot deck ages shingles from underneath. This is the single biggest avoidable subtractor from a roof's life in this climate. How attic ventilation works.
- Install quality
- Nails in the nail line at the specified count, a real starter course, new flashing rather than reused. A well-installed cheap shingle outlasts a badly installed premium one.
- Exposure
- A south-facing slope ages faster than a north-facing one. A slope under trees stays damp and grows moss. A river-facing elevation takes wind the sheltered side never sees.
Typical service life by material
| Material | Typically expected | What usually ends it |
|---|---|---|
| Three-tab asphalt | About twenty years | Granule loss and wind, in that order |
| Architectural asphalt | About twenty-five years or more | Mat embrittlement; the details fail long before the field |
| Standing seam metal | Fifty years or more | Flashings and penetrations, almost never the panels |
| Slate | A hundred years or more | Fastener failure and the deck beneath, not the slate |
| Clay or concrete tile | Sixty years or more | The underlayment beneath, which is a fraction of the tile's life |
| Low-slope membrane | About twenty years | Seams, terminations and ponding |
Notice the pattern in the right-hand column. On almost every material, the thing that ends the roof is not the material. It is a detail, a fastener or a layer underneath — which is why the anatomy drawing is the more useful page if you only read one.
When the answer is "get it looked at now"
- Daylight in the attic, at any age. That is a gap.
- Three or more repairs in a couple of years, which usually means the failures are age-related rather than incidental.
- Shingles brittle enough that lifting one to work under it breaks it, which makes any repair destructive.
- Widespread granule loss with the mat visible in the field.
- Any recorded storm event near you inside the last twelve months that the roof has not been checked against.
A dated condition report with photographs turns all of this from an estimate into a fact.
Request a free inspectionAll work is performed by licensed and insured local roofing professionals.