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I’ve seen worse. This is still pretty bad, though. And it’s not really a complex roof.
Well, I know why I stopped working in tendering and site supervision after some 20 years, don’t I?
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Although there’s another problem, too - hiring someone who is known and recommended, only to have them sub-contract out the job to someone who didn’t know what the fuck they were doing. I’ve seen that too many times.
My poor mother had a newly-installed leaky roof for years because the roofer not only refused to accept responsibility for it, he refused to acknowledge that the rather obvious problems with it even existed (he never looked at the roof) because he had “good workers.”
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I think the most likely explanation is that the tile roof was in decent shape, but did not afford the ability to run up the charges to $20,000 repairing it. A contractor that does work like this would not quail at making the recommendation to trash a perfectly good roof so he could put up a perfectly shit one.
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Not to mention make a pretty penny selling off the tiles.
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I don’t think that the owner would have had a roofer in the first place if he wasn’t having any problem with the original roof. My guess is that even if the original tile was pretty well installed, the homeowner might have had a few problems with it due to the complex roof shape. He may have gotten a few estimates, and those for actually fixing the tile roof were pretty expensive. Bubba had a much lower bid to tear off the old roof and do a crap job putting up an inferior replacement. After the work is done, the homeowner has second thoughts (perhaps some of those thin bits on the edge were already coming down) and calls the inspector.
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Cool Impala (I think?) at 6:32. Bummer about the roof.
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As a contractor, this makes me sick to my stomach. I just can’t imagine what it would be like to fuck up a twenty-thousand dollar job.
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two points…
- That is the craziest roofline I have ever seen.
- The inspector needs to invest in a go pro instead, walking around on a roof like that holding a phone to record things is asking for an accident.
Also, yeah, clearly a terrible roofing job.
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Turns out in a lot of northern climates black roofs are the better choice- they do absorb heat in the summer, but they do in the winter as well, and that boost in heating in a climate where the majority of loads are heating, it means lower costs.
Now in Florida, it’s he wrong choice, and probably most of California as well.
And charging a hefty ‘disposal fee’ to the original owner, no doubt.
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Maybe, but any problems would be around transitions between pitches and with flashing and sealing. The tiles are pretty bulletproof, so the vast majority of them covering flat roof sections should be just fine.
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I’m a professional engineer and specialize in building envelope work. Roof consulting is a portion of that. My world is mostly high end stuff – commercial, institutional, multi-family mid- and high-rise work and such. The only time I ever mess around with single-family residential work is for family and friends - no charge but on my schedule. It’s a f’in disaster trying to get qualified contractors at the residential level. My stock line is that if they were any good, they would be doing commercial work where the projects are bigger, pay better, and the clients are a fraction of the hassle.
Having said all that, many years back a large tree fell on mom’s house during an east coast hurricane. I ended up playing Construction Manager for the extensive rebuild. The general contractor we got, after much vetting, wasn’t half bad. But the roofer he hired… oy. It’s not a big house - its an old Sears cottage actually - and has a simple roof line. I wrote a punchlist for the roofer with 51 items on it. The most damning was that ALL the nails were incorrectly installed (misplaced, over-driven, under-driven, etc.), voiding any warranty that the shingle manufacturer might provide, especially any related to wind uplift. The GC refused to pay the roofer a penny then brought in another roofer who ripped off 100% of the new shingles and did the whole job over again. GC was smart and gave the new guy my punchlist from the first attempt so they would now how, um…, serious I was.
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How I wish I had your eyes and experience! I usually, eventually catch the nonsense but often too late to make the contractor take care of it.
Most recent was a sliding window in a bath surround where I eventually noticed the outside framing was over the weep hole so the rain falling into the track is ending up inside the building frame, and that the inside sill was not pitched to shed the water rather than puddle it. When you get a bathroom completely gutted and tiled it all looks so bright and new it takes a while to notice the little details done wrong.
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The key for most – allowing for untrained eyes – is watching as the installation takes place and understanding the function and interrelationship of the pieces and parts. It’s a shame you can’t count on the installer but you’re firmly in caveat emptor territory here. Assume they’re morons and educate yourself. Look over everything at multiple points in the installation. If it’s a multi-day job in your own home, each evening after the contractor leaves is ideal. Make written lists, including with questions. Be earnest, not accusatory. Be firm and consistent about your expectations, assuming they are reasonable and can be supported. Learn the meaning of “unworkmanlike” because it’ll serve you well in the event of legal action (the contractor’s counsel knows what it means and has reason to fear it in correspondence). Don’t pay invoices until the contractor has correctly installed the work. (Don’t, in fact, ever pay a penny in advance unless unless it is for materials purchased and already delivered to the site. Any contractor not financially solvent enough to start a project without your money isn’t one you want to hire.)
Oh dear. I think I could write a book.
(edited for grammar)
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Basically you must make the contractors realize that ripping you off will take at least as much time and skill as doing a proper job in the first place.
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While I’d really love to hire contractors for everything we do during renovations/repairs (my other half is a carpenter by trade), the odds of getting a shit contractor are very high. So we self perform as much as possible. This inspector’s video illustrates just a few of the ways the average homeowner can get screwed over.
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A friend of mine used to run roofing crews, but got out of it in part because he wouldn’t bend on workplace safety standards, and couldn’t compete on price with roofing outfits that did.
Wearing a safety harness at all times when you’re on the roof slows you down a lot, so outfits that had people work without harnesses could bid to do a job in 2/3 to 3/4 of the hours in his bids.
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A couple of years ago we bought an 1820 wooden house in a coastal village - I was aware that the previous owner had neglected maintenance (and we got a slightly lower price because of that) but I didn’t realize how badly she had ignored literally everything that needed to be done. No painting, no leaf removal, no gutter cleaning, no window cleaning, etc. And the person she had bought the house from had not got permits for any of the changes they had made.
So now we are trying to untangle and fix 10+ years of deferred maintenance and another 15 before that of bodged, not-to-code “fixes”.
But, relevant to this discussion - I can’t believe how hard it is to find contractors of any flavor. It took me months to get three painters to come and give me estimates and one bid 3.5X higher than the other two. The next thing on my list is a new roof and this makes me even more nervous, because I feel like I need to be a roofing expert just to not get ripped off (the same way I had to learn everything about painting for the current project).
Other than personal recommendations is there a solution to this? Is Angies List any good?
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Hire people recommended by friends or people that you know that have had the same work done.
Always check for online reviews realizing that even the best contractors are going to have negatives.
Develop a dialog and check the work in progress. Have the contractor explain the process to you and ask them questions. Let them know from the beginning that you are going to have the work inspected when the job is over.
Understand that you get what you pay for. Sometimes contractors are just shitty or lazy. You can talk to them about that but don’t forget that most requests that seem small cost extra and take from the bottom line.
Get multiple bids or opinions from others.
Realize that no job is ever perfect. You can apply exacting standards while realizing that sometimes it’s not going to turn out exactly like you imagined. If that’s a big deal to you, hire an architect and then realize it’s still not always going to turn out how you imagined.
