Built Local
Two Generations of Rockville Roofs, Two Different Problems
Rockville really has two housing stocks. The older half — Twinbrook, Rockville Town Center’s surrounding streets, Hungerford and Burgundy Knolls — is full of 1950s and ’60s ramblers and split-levels with low-pitch roofs, shallow attics and original plank decking. These roofs suffer from poor ventilation, ice damming along shallow eaves in February, and shingle blow-offs because low-slope planes catch wind differently than steep ones.
The newer half — King Farm, Fallsgrove and the townhome communities built from the mid-’90s through the 2000s — was roofed with builder-grade 25-year three-tab shingles that are now 20 to 30 years old. We walk these neighborhoods after every wind event along the I-270 corridor and find the same signature: creased and lifted tabs on west- and south-facing slopes, missing ridge caps, and nail pops working through thin shingles. In 20850, 20851, 20852 and 20853, a roof that “looks fine from the driveway” frequently has widespread wind damage visible only from on top.