Hello, forum.
I recently had a new roof done. We bought asphalt singles with a new felt underlay. (50 pound felt, 40 year singles.) The quote was obtained in May. The work was done in November.
We’ve paid about half, and I’m not planning on paying any more until the roof is fixed to my satisfaction.
One of the cheap, crappy, little windows on the shed was broken. The shed’s in horrible shape, but the underlying carport is just fine. (Don’t ask. It’s a long story for a different forum.) It was fixed last week, and it looks like the subcontractors were a family of beavers. They left a mess, including broken glass on the driveway. They offered to send someone out to clean up the mess, but I figured it would probably take them 2 more months to find someone who could use a broom.
After a lot of new rain (we’re on the west coast) the gutters are full of “shingle gravel”. A lot of it is the new black colour, but some is the old green - which was removed when the work was done. There was also a lot of leafy debris, clearly older than any new droppings could be. When I called to comment on this, he said that it was normal and would be just washed down the gutters. (In my experience, rock usually just sits there at the lowest point and clogs the drains.)
The roof overlaps the gutters substantially. I called another company in town, and they said that the normal overhang is 1-1.5 inches. There’s apparently a line on the felt that makes it line up perfectly. On the new roof, the singles overlap the gutters by 3-4 inches, and in some places go completely over the gutters. (If your gutters aren’t working, it’s not a house. It’s a pile of wood. Am I right?)
My feelings are this:
- They messed up the roof, and the overhang is excessive.
- They couldn’t reach into the gutters to clean them afterwards, so they didn’t.
- When we complained, we were told two stories: One, that it was a leaf guard. Two, that during the summer, the house would expand and that it would make more sense when it was hot.
(Conveniently, if I wait until the summer, they’ll have all the money.)
Are there any circumstances where a responsible roofer would overhang the gutter in order to “create a leaf guard”?
How much will a house expand in the summer? I can’t imagine any object expanding by that much, independent of the other materials.
What should I get them to do to fix the roof? They suggested cutting the shingles to get them to fit correctly. I honestly don’t know if that’s a good solution. There’s a good chance that they’ll mess that up too.
Thank you for your help.