Built Local
Large Roofs, Complex Details, Higher Stakes
The colonials and custom homes built across Potomac from the 1970s through the 1990s — Potomac Falls, River Falls, Avenel, Copenhaver, Fox Hills — carry some of the most complex residential rooflines in Montgomery County. Multiple intersecting gables, dormers, dead valleys behind chimneys, skylight banks and finished attic spaces mean more linear feet of flashing than three ordinary houses combined. On a roof like this, the shingles are rarely the first thing to fail; the details are.
A huge share of 20854 homes were also originally roofed in cedar shake. Forty years on, most of those roofs have been replaced once — sometimes with shake again, more often with heavyweight architectural shingle designed to mimic it. If you still have original or second-generation shake, splitting, cupping and fastener corrosion are almost certainly underway. We tell you honestly whether the roof has years left in it or whether a conversion to a modern GAF designer shingle system is the smarter spend. If it has years left, that is what the report says.