How the business runs

A roofing business that works across eight town lines

This is a roofing business covering Passaic and the seven municipalities around it: Clifton, Garfield, Lodi, Elmwood Park, Hawthorne, Totowa and Rutherford. The work is repair, replacement, flat roofing, gutters, skylights, inspection and maintenance on residential and small multi-family buildings.

It is organized around a distinction homeowners here are rarely given. New Jersey's construction code is a state code, so it is the same in all eight towns -- but each has its own construction office, fee schedule and inspection diary, and each has markedly different housing. That means the paperwork route changes across a boundary while the rules do not, and the price changes because of the building rather than the geography. Both get stated in writing here rather than left as folklore.

Roofs, gutters and skylights -- not siding, windows or masonry
No storm-damage paperwork of any kind
No inspection that ends in a quote and nothing else
No price without walking the roof and the roof space

An attic with exposed rafters and a small window under the roof — **Up there**Survey before any price is given

How it runs

Four steps, no surprises

Free inspection, the right construction office confirmed, then a written quote.

Call or message

Tell us the town and the kind of building -- attached, detached, or three units and up. The town tells us which construction office and what it needs; the building tells us whether this roof fails at an edge or in the field, which is most of the diagnosis.

Survey, roof and roof space

Both, and with a written outcome rather than a verbal verdict. On a flat roof that means measuring standing water; on a pitched roof it means the eaves, the valleys and the penetrations; in the roof space it means looking for where water has actually traveled.

The route and the price, in writing

Which office the permit goes to and what it will need, the failed detail named rather than 'repair roof', the system specified where one is being installed, and decking priced per sheet.

The work, and the photographs

Arrangements made with whichever town it is, the site left clean, and a before-and-after set that is yours whatever you decide to do next.

Before you choose

Five checks worth making on every quote, including ours

Two are about New Jersey specifically, and one catches more than you would expect across eight town lines.

Is there an HIC registration number on it

New Jersey registers home improvement contractors rather than licensing roofers, and the number belongs on every advert and contract. The register is public. The wording is a tell too: the code says not to call it a license, so a New Jersey roofer advertising their roofing 'license' has not read the rules closely.

Does the quote name which construction office

Not 'we handle the permit' -- which office. Eight towns touch each other here and a filing at the wrong one costs a week. A contractor who cannot name the office for your address is working outside their usual patch.

Does it name the failed detail or just the job

'Repair roof' is not a scope. 'Re-bed the valley, replace two vent boots, re-lap the upstand to the parapet' is -- and it can be checked when the work is finished, which is the entire point.

On a quote for a system, is the system specified

Membrane and thickness on a flat roof. Gutter size and downspout size on gutters. Shingle grade on a pitch. Those are the lines that separate a cheap quote from a lesser roof, and they are the first things left out.

Did anybody go into the roof space

On most of this housing the truth about where water traveled is visible from underneath and nowhere else. A quote produced from the roof alone has skipped the half that tells you where to work.

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