How the business runs

A roofing business organized around a very dense city

This is a roof replacement business working Passaic and Wallington. The work is residential, apartment and small commercial: flat and low-slope systems mostly, with pitched sections where the housing has them.

It is organized around the thing that makes this city different from anywhere a national pricing guide was written about. At 22,514 people per square mile there is no side yard, no driveway and nowhere to stand a dumpster, the buildings are attached and bounded by parapets, and the way onto a roof is frequently through the building. All of that is labor rather than roofing, and pretending otherwise produces quotes that change once work starts. So the survey establishes the route first and the written scope says how material and waste will move.

Replacement work -- leak diagnosis is not our lane
No storm-damage paperwork of any kind
No work inside an occupied unit beyond protecting it
No price without seeing the frontage and the roof

An attic with a brick chimney stack rising through the floor — **On site**Survey before any price is given

How it runs

Four steps, no surprises

Free inspection, the access route and dumpster position agreed in writing, then a written quote.

Call or message

Tell us the address and what is on the ground floor -- a shop, a workshop or flats. That decides how we get to the roof, what has to be protected underneath and whose hours the work has to fit around, which in this city is most of the job.

Survey, route and roof

The frontage, the way up and the dumpster position first, then the roof itself. Parapets, copings and outlets get looked at as carefully as the field, because that is where a roof here actually fails.

Written scope, then the price

Named details rather than 'replace roof': the system and its thickness, the attachment method, what happens at every parapet and penetration, and decking priced per sheet. How material and waste will move is written down too.

The work, and the photographs

Street arrangements made in advance, protection under any occupied space, a sequence that closes what it opens, 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

Three of them are about the site rather than the roof, which in this city is where the money actually is.

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 it say how material and waste will move

The question that separates most quotes in Passaic. Where is the dumpster going, who arranged the street, and how does a tear-off leave a building with no side yard? A quote silent on all three has a variation built into it.

Does it cover the parapet, the coping and the outlet

Not just the field. On an attached building those three are where the roof fails, and they are detail work rather than area work. 'Replace roof' is not a scope.

Is the system actually specified

Thickness, attachment method, insulation. 'Rubber roof' or 'flat roof' is a word, not a specification, and the difference between a $6 and a $14 commercial roof is mostly in those three lines.

Did anybody go up

No figure should be given without the roof and the frontage being looked at. We do not quote at the curb and we do not quote from a photograph alone.

About