Roof Repair in Scarborough

The houses built across Scarborough in the 1960s and 70s are now between 50 and 65 years old. Most have had at least one roofing cycle, and many are on their second or third set of shingles. The cumulative issues, multiple layers of material, degraded underlayment, aged flashing systems, are what we deal with most in this part of the city.

Our approach is always to assess before recommending. If a targeted repair extends the roof's useful life by 10 years, that's what we propose. We don't manufacture urgency around a full replacement when repair is the right call.

Properties in the Cliffside, Guildwood, and West Hill areas near the Scarborough Bluffs experience more aggressive weathering than properties further inland. Lake Ontario's freeze-thaw cycles and the salt content of lake-effect precipitation accelerate flashing corrosion and membrane degradation. We account for this in our material specifications.

If you own a property near the Bluffs, we recommend more frequent inspection cycles than the standard, typically every 2-3 years rather than 5, to catch developing problems before they become active leaks.

A meaningful share of Scarborough's 1960s and 70s housing is now approaching its third roof, and the third one is where the accumulated shortcuts come due. Each earlier cycle made a decision that the next crew inherited: whether the old material came off, whether the deck was assessed or simply covered, whether the valley metal and step flashing were replaced or reused because they still looked serviceable from six feet away.

By the third cycle those decisions have compounded into a roof that cannot simply be re-covered again. We open a section before quoting anything on a house of this age, because the difference between a straightforward reroof and a deck rebuild is several thousand dollars and it is not visible from the driveway. The answer we give you is based on what came off, not on what the age of the house suggests should be there.

A detail that catches people out here: a great many Scarborough houses are not entirely sloped. The split-levels and side-splits built through the 1960s and 70s frequently carry a flat or near-flat section over a garage, a rear addition, or a porch, and that section is almost always the part that leaks. It was often built with a rolled asphalt product that was cheap and adequate at the time and has long since gone brittle.

These sections need membrane work rather than shingle work, which is why a roofer who only does slope will patch them and be back the following spring. The fix depends on whether there is enough fall to drain. Where there is, a proper membrane with correctly detailed edges and a real drainage path lasts. Where there is not, the honest answer is that the slope has to be built before any membrane will hold, and we say that rather than selling a repair we expect to fail.