Learn
The part where you work out what you are actually dealing with
Fourteen articles, written to answer the question rather than to get you to a form. If you read three of them and decide your roof is fine for another five years, this section did its job.
Is my roof done?
- 01How long does a roof last?Service life by material, and the four things about this climate that take years off it.
- 02Repair or replace?The five questions that settle it, and why age alone is the worst of them.
- 03Signs you need a new roofWhat to look for from the ground, from the gutter and from inside the attic.
What am I looking at?
- 01Wind damage vs ordinary wearCreasing, broken seals and directional patterns, told apart from a roof that has simply been in the sun too long.
- 02What hail damage looks likeBruising, blistering, granule loss and creasing, drawn to the same scale and told apart.
- 03Hurricane season roof prepWhy a roof bruised by spring hail is the roof that leaks in September, and what to do between the two.
What goes into a roof
- 01Shingle types compared3-tab, architectural, designer and impact-rated, and which of those distinctions earns its money here.
- 02Self-adhered underlaymentThe peel-and-stick membrane at valleys, penetrations and wall lines, and why wind-driven rain is what it is for.
- 03Attic ventilationIntake and exhaust as a pair, in a hot humid climate where the intake is nearly always the missing half.
- 04Roof pitch guideWhat 4:12 and 9:12 mean, what changes at each step, and where shingles stop working.
- 05Roofing squares explainedThe unit every estimate is written in, and why your roof is bigger than your house.
Buying the job
- 01What drives roof costThe eight factors that move a roofing number, ranked by how much they move it. No figures.
- 02How to read a roofing estimateLine by line, including the lines that are missing.
- 03Choosing a rooferWhat to verify in a state with no roofing license, what to ignore, and the sentences that should end a conversation.
What this market does to roofs
Four things shape almost every roofing problem in Greater Houston, and the biggest of them is not a storm at all.
Sun and heat. An asphalt shingle is a mat saturated with asphalt and surfaced with granules, and what it loses over time is the volatile content that keeps the asphalt flexible. Ultraviolet load and a daily temperature swing drive that out, and a hot attic underneath does it from the other side. This is why the south and west slopes of a Houston roof are frequently years ahead of the north and east slopes on the same house, and why the date on the permit is not the age of every slope.
Wind. NOAA logged 256 damaging-wind reports and 148 hail reports across the eight counties this site covers between 2021 and 2026. Wind leads. Hail is not a footnote. Wind damage starts at the perimeter of the roof, which means the starter course, the drip edge, the nailing pattern and how well a fastener holds in the deck do more for a roof here than a printed rating does. The strongest straight-line wind day in that record is 16 May 2024, with 24 reports across the service area and estimated gusts to 104 miles per hour.
Hail. 133 of the recorded hail reports are an inch or larger, and the largest stones on record in the window are 2.75″. Unlike the northern market this site’s structure came from, hail here is a genuine first-order peril. It is also seasonal: 89 percent of the hail record falls between March and June.
Tropical systems, and what they find. The Atlantic hurricane season runs from June through November, which is almost exactly the part of the year the hail record goes quiet. So the two perils arrive in sequence rather than together, and the sequence is the interesting part: hail fractures a mat in the spring without making a hole, and then a tropical system drives rain sideways across it in the summer. That is the subject of hurricane season roof prep, and it is the most Houston-specific thing on this site.
See what NOAA recorded near your address, with dates.
Check your ZIP codeReading is the cheap part. If you want somebody on the roof telling you what is actually up there, the inspection costs nothing.
Request a free inspectionIf you would rather look at a drawing
The roof anatomy tool is a section through a typical roof, with every component labeled: what each one is, how it fails, and what happens if it is ignored. It is the fastest way to put names to the things these articles talk about.
Is any of this specific to Houston, or is it generic roofing content?
The storm figures come from the NOAA Storm Events Database for the eight counties this site covers, and they drive the emphasis throughout: wind detailing at the perimeter, ultraviolet and thermal ageing as the primary end-of-life mechanism, hot humid attic ventilation, hail as a real spring peril, and wind-driven rain as the thing that finds a roof that was already compromised. Where something is general building science, it is written as general building science.
Do these articles tell me what a roof costs?
No, and that is deliberate. A number produced before anyone has established the squares, the pitch, the layers and the deck condition is a guess. What drives roof cost explains which factors move the number and by roughly how much relative to each other, which is what lets you understand a real quote when you get one.
Can I use this to decide whether to file an insurance claim?
It will help you understand what you are looking at. What it cannot do is predict what your carrier will decide — nobody outside your carrier can. The insurance section explains the process, the terms, and the Texas-specific parts: percentage wind and hail deductibles, windstorm cover on the coast, and what the law says about your deductible.
Does any of this change if I am on the coast?
Two things do. Salt air becomes the leading wear mechanism on everything metal, which moves fasteners, vents, flashings and edge metal up the priority list ahead of the shingles. And if your address is in the designated catastrophe area, a roof replacement generally needs a windstorm inspection and certificate of compliance — see windstorm cover and TWIA.
All work is performed by insured local roofing professionals. Texas does not license roofing contractors at state level, so insurance, references and a written scope are what there is to check.