Roofing in Lincoln

Rings of housing

Lincoln is easy to read from the air. There is the older core around the capitol and the university, mostly pre war, then post war neighborhoods spreading outward, then the newer subdivisions on the south and east edges that are still going up.

Each ring behaves differently on a roof. In the core you find board decking rather than plywood sheets, steeper pitches, more dormers, and roofs that have been redone several times with layers left in place. In the post war ring the roofs are simple, walkable and easy to quote. On the edges the roofs are large, complicated in shape, and all the same age.

That is why comparing your quote with somebody else's in a different part of town is rarely useful. It is a different roof.

The student rental belt

The area around the university has a heavy concentration of rentals, and it has two problems at once. Maintenance is reactive, so small failures at boots and flashings run on longer than they would in an owner occupied house. And the buildings themselves are the worst shape for ice damming, with partly finished attics, knee walls, and additions that were insulated casually or not at all.

The result is a neighborhood where a lot of ceiling damage in February gets diagnosed as a roof problem and treated with a new roof, and then happens again the following February. If you own property in that belt, the money is in the attic rather than on the roof, and the ice dam page explains the order to do it in.

Board decking in the core

Older Lincoln houses were sheathed with boards laid with gaps rather than with continuous sheets. It works, but modern fasteners and some underlayments assume a solid surface, and after a century some of those boards are soft where water has been getting in around a valley or a chimney.

The practical consequence is that a quote for an older house should say what happens if boards need replacing and what sheeting over would cost, rather than leaving it to be discovered. Old roofs also tend to carry more than one layer, which changes tear off and disposal.

Storm season in the city

Lincoln is well inside the part of the state that gets serious hail, and a big event brings a great many out of town roofing crews in for a few weeks. Nebraska makes that easy to filter, because every contractor working here has to be on the state register and the register is public.

It takes a minute and it is worth doing before anybody climbs a ladder. What it will not tell you is whether they are any good, which is the state's own position on it, set out on the contracts page.