Hi.
I bought a house last summer and I quickly discovered the roof on the garage is leaking in a couple of spots. When I bought the house, there was a pallet of asphalt shingles sitting outside under a tarp. They’re new unopened shingles, but the pallet they were sitting on was starting to rot so I know they had been there a while. I moved them inside the garage before winter.
I was wondering if there’s any way of knowing how old the shingles are? And would they still be ok to use on my garage?
Thanks for the help.
Look at it this way…
If the shingles were under the tarp (and they are in there origonal wrapping)…Then use then for repairs, they will last until your next roof.
If the top and bottom layers were exposed to the weather, then the ones in between should be fine to use for repairs and last as long.
I would think there would either be a date of manufacture shown on the package or a date code on the packaging from which you could tell when they were manufactured. That does not however tell you how long they may have been in storage at the distributor.
By nature of their use, shingles are exposed to the weather (obviously). I don’t see much of a reason why the majority of them shouldn’t be just fine.
Can you post a picture? Many brands went through a lot of packaging and warranty changes. Might be able to give a general idea of age if we can see what you got.
You defiantly don’t want to put on any of the Certainteed organics (asphalt) that have the class action lawsuit. Seen those fail in five years.
Most bundles will have a date written on the bundle somewhere.
Regardless, if you want to patch something for a few years, they should be fine.
look at the tar lines on the bottoms of the shingles…if they dont appear to have ever been heated and melted then you are good to go…especially for repairs
Thanks for all the replies. I snapped a few pics to give you a better idea of what I have.
I guess I can’t post links or pics yet but if you add /shinglepics to photobucket’s url you can see them.
The 4th pic shows the only number I could find on the package. The rest of them are shots of the packaging and the shingles themselves.
It looks like the garage is pretty much due for a new roof and I think I have enough of these to cover it. Would this be a bad idea? It has a pretty low pitch if that matters.
Simply contact the previous home owner or builder who made that house they told you the accurate date installation of shingles.
