See What it Takes to Keep Your Home Protected
There’s a reason it takes years of training to be a professional roofer. To do its job and protect your home, your roof relies on a series of interconnected structures concealed beneath the outer layer. While our roofers will always walk you through every diagnosis, repair, or installation using easy-to-understand language, it may help to know exactly what these structures and components are.
The Outer Layers
The outer layers of your roof are the parts that are visible to the outside world. This consists of protective layers, sealants, and other defensive components.
This part of your roof consists of:
- Shingles – The part of your roof you likely have the most experience with. Coming in a variety of materials, these layered tiles protect you from the elements and add to your home’s aesthetic appeal.
- Gutters – Another structure you may be familiar with, gutters let the water that your shingles deflect wash away from your roof. Homes without gutters usually have a drip edge, which serves a similar purpose.
- Chimney – Not all homes have these structures, which serve as airways for fireplaces.
- Roof vents – These enclosed structures sit on the surface of your roof, and provide essential ventilation for your plumbing, heating, and cooling systems while helping your roof stay dry.
- Flashing – Flashing is a term that we roofers use to refer to the weather-resistant molding that’s used where structures like chimneys or vents connect to your roof.
- Ridges – The peaks of your roof, where two planes of roofing intersect.
- Roof edge – also known as the eaves edge or fascia, this is where the singles stop and boarding marks the end of your roof.
The Invisible Interior
These roofing components aren’t visible from the exterior, but that doesn’t make them any less important. In fact, the structures and protective layers are absolutely essential to your roof, and if they’re compromised, your entire home could be in danger.
The interior of your roof consists of:
- The attic – Yes, your attic is a part of your roof. Specifically, it’s the space under your roof, that when properly ventilated helps you manage your interior temperature.
- Rafters – These beams form the primary structure of your roof.
- Joists – This term refers to beams that run between your rafters to provide extra support.
- Decking – A plywood layer that covers the underlying structures and provides a nailbed for the shingles.
- Deflectors – These are layers that go between rafters to ensure proper ventilation.
- Underlay membrane – A protective layer under the shingles that protects them from any resin that the decking produces and protects the decking against anything that makes it past the shingles.
- Eaves membrane – An additional protective layer found in some roofs, under some or all of the shingles, that protects against ice and water damage.
Why You Need to Know
It’s easy to fix problems with the visible parts of your roof, like shingles, but we often don’t recognize that other parts of our roofs are damaged until its too late. By understanding all the parts of your roof, and y realizing that each part is vulnerable to damage, you can better understand how important it is to make sure your roof is maintained and repaired the right way.
Our professional roofing team can perform inspections and maintenance services that address all the various parts of your roof. Unlike DIY roofing, our services are designed to increase the lifespan of your roof and prevent damages by ensuring that every part is still doing its job, and that damages to one part have not spread to others.
Contact our team today to schedule your roofing appointment! We have everything you need to make sure every part of your roof is working to keep you protected!