Roof Rejuvenation in Hagerstown, MD

Two housing stocks, one interstate crossroads.

Hagerstown is the largest city we serve and the only place in our area where two interstates cross. I-81 and I-70 push an enormous volume of traffic through town every day, and the corridors they cut are wide, open and hot. Roofs along them sit exposed to sun and reflected heat with very little tree cover to take the edge off.

Heat is what pulls the oil out of an asphalt shingle. The hotter a roof plane runs through a July afternoon, the faster the maltenes evaporate, and the sooner the shingle stiffens and starts shedding. On the suburban rings east and north of the city, where most of the housing is late twentieth century and 2000s construction with wide, simple, sun facing planes, that is exactly what has been happening quietly for years.

What we run into on Hagerstown roofs

Closer to the older core the picture changes. Brick homes, Victorians and rowhouses with steep pitches and dormers hold less surface up to the sun but far more complicated geometry, and they have almost all been reroofed at some point. On those the question is simply how old the current shingle is. A steep pitch sheds water fast, which helps, but it does nothing at all about the drying.

• Wide, open, sun facing planes along the I-81 and I-70 corridors
• Suburban roofs from the 1990s and 2000s now inside the treatment window
• Steep older city rooflines where the current shingle age is what counts