How the business runs

A leak business that asks who owns the roof first

This is a roof leak repair business working Monroe Township and the Middlesex County boroughs beside it. The work is residential: leak detection and repair, flat roofs, skylights, chimney flashings and replacement, on single-family housing and on units inside the township's age-restricted communities.

It is organized around a fact that makes a good share of this market different from anywhere else we work. In a condominium or a co-operative the roof is generally a common element the association maintains and replaces on a reserve schedule, so the honest first answer to a unit owner is often 'call the management office, not us'. Saying that costs work. Not saying it means taking money from people for something they have already paid for, which is worse.

Roofing only -- no siding, windows or general contracting
No storm-damage paperwork of any kind
No work on a common element without the association's instruction
No price without walking the roof and the roof space

A man inspecting an attic floor between the rafters — **On the roof**Survey before any price is given

How it runs

Four steps, no surprises

Free inspection, and an honest answer about whose roof it is before any price.

Call or message

Tell us the address and whether the property is inside one of the communities. That single answer decides whether this is a job we can quote you for at all, and it is much better established on the phone than after somebody has been out.

Stop the water, if it is running

An active leak gets temporary cover regardless of who owns the roof. Nobody sensible reads governing documents under a wet ceiling, and nothing about making a building watertight commits you to anything.

Find the entry point, not the stain

The slope, the details that actually fail, and the roof space underneath -- because the evidence of where water has been running is on the underside. You get photographs and a written opinion whether or not the work turns out to be ours.

Then the right route, which is sometimes not us

Where the roof is yours, a written scope with the registration number on it and the three-day cancellation notice included. Where it is the association's, a report written so it can be handed straight to the management office.

Before you choose

Five things worth asking of every quote, including this one

The first one is the reason a share of our phone calls end with us telling somebody to ring their management office instead.

Did anybody ask whose roof it is

In this township that question is not pedantry, it is the difference between a necessary repair and paying twice for something your assessment already covers. A contractor who did not ask either did not know or did not want to.

Is there a registration number on the document

Not on a website footer -- on the quote you were handed. New Jersey requires it there, and its absence tells you something before you have read a single price.

Does the diagnosis name an entry point

Not a stain, an entry point. Water runs along a rafter before it shows, so a quote to seal the ceiling side is a quote to do nothing slowly.

Is the decking priced per sheet

Nobody knows how much deck has softened until the covering is off. A rate per sheet is an honest answer; a lump sum is a guess that gets revisited upwards once the roof is open.

Does it hand you the three days without being asked

The cancellation notice is a legal requirement, not a courtesy. Including it unprompted says somebody expects the quote to survive you thinking about it overnight.

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