Roofing Contractor in Jersey City, NJ

Roofing Services in Jersey City, NJ

Why almost every Jersey City roof is a flat roof

Jersey City is the seat of Hudson County and the second-largest city in the state, and downtown it is built the way Brooklyn is built: attached brownstones and rowhouses behind a parapet wall, with a flat or barely-sloped roof you cannot see from the street. The Van Vorst Park blocks went up in the 1850s and 1860s; the Hamilton Park townhouses are post-Civil War; Paulus Hook is a historic district of brownstones and rowhouses. Those roofs are now on their fourth or fifth covering. It is the defining fact about roofing in this city, and it changes what you should ask a contractor. Shingle experience is not the qualification here; seams, flashing and drainage are.

Repair or replace a flat roof?

A flat roof rarely fails all at once, so the honest answer is usually “not yet”. We repair while the wet area is isolated, the deck underneath is still sound and the seams still take a repair. We recommend replacing when saturation has spread through the insulation, the decking has gone soft, or the roof has already been patched in several places and the leaks keep coming back. We will tell you which it is after we have been on the roof, in writing and with photographs, and we will say so when a roof still has years left. The pitched-roof side of our work is on the roof repair and roof replacement pages; the low-slope systems — membrane, modified bitumen, built-up, coatings — are set out on our commercial and flat roofing page.

Working on a rowhouse: access, parking and the neighbours

On an attached house there is no side yard, no driveway and often no back access. Everything goes up and comes down through the front or over the roof, and the street outside is metered or permit-only. That is a planning problem, and we plan it before the crew turns up rather than discovering it on the morning. It also means talking to the people next door. A parapet or a party-wall detail is shared, and a job that ignores the adjoining roof just moves the leak one house along. Where the work touches a neighbour’s roof we say so at estimate stage.

Gutters, downspouts and where the water ends up

On a flat roof the gutter and downspout are not an accessory; they are the only route the water has. Blocked, disconnected or undersized, and the roof holds it instead — which on an attached house means it goes into the wall rather than onto the ground. We clear, repair and replace gutters, downspouts and the soffit and fascia behind them, and we check the drainage every time we are on a roof here.

Hudson County, and how long it takes us to get there

Jersey City is about 32 miles from our Rockaway office — I-80 east to I-280 and down to the Turnpike extension — which is roughly 45 minutes when the roads are behaving. We cover the rest of Hudson County from the same office, and Hudson is one of our four main counties, not an outlying one; the wider roofing range is here. Someone answers the phone at any hour.

Call 973-960-7921 at any hour. We will get on the roof, find where the water is actually getting in, and put the scope and the price in writing before anything starts. Boundless Roof Repair & Replacement · 9 Stony Brook Rd, Rockaway, NJ 07866 · NJ Home Improvement Contractor Reg. #13VH10877700 · Licensed and fully insured (general liability $1,000,000 / $2,000,000; certificate on request) · GAF Certified · Owens Corning Preferred · BBB Accredited A+ · Serving Bergen, Hudson, Morris and Passaic counties since 2012.

What actually fails on a Jersey City flat roof

When a Jersey City owner calls about a leak, it is usually one of these, in roughly this order:

• The parapet. Where the roof turns up to meet the low wall around it is the single most common leak on a rowhouse, and the most commonly patched badly.
• Open seams. Membrane laps that lifted, split, or were never properly welded in the first place.
• Drains and scuppers. A flat roof has no slope to save it. Block the outlet and the water simply stays, adding weight while it looks for another way down.
• Ponding. Standing water three days after the rain, usually a deck that has deflected or insulation that has compressed.
• The party wall. On an attached house, water getting in at your neighbour’s side of the shared wall arrives in your ceiling.

Boundless Roof Repair & Replacement

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