If you are a home owner, you understand the importance of a roof. After all, the roofing of your home is a huge part of the overall stability of the home, providing you with shelter and safety even in the worst of weather conditions. Your roof keeps you safe and dry, and maintains the home’s integrity. Without a roof, would a house really be a house? And so it is important to take good care of your roof, from regular maintenance to carefully selecting the material of your roof shingles if the time ever comes that you replace your roof entirely. Gutters should also be regularly provided with maintenance as well.
Maintenance should be provided on a regular and scheduled basis both for your roof and the gutters attached to it. Gutters should be cleared as soon as they are clogged – typically after a storm or during the fall months, when leaves fall abundantly from the trees in many regions all throughout the United States. A clogged gutter is no good, as it can lead to basement flooding and other such water problems if left untreated. In fact, the typical clogged gutter is the number one cause of such problems relating to water in the basement.
Your roof should regularly be inspected as well. For new roofs, it is likely that you will only need to have it inspected once a year at most, while older roofs will need to be inspected more frequently. Though more than twenty percent of home owners only have their roof looked at if they suspect a problem such as storm damage (or other types of damage), roof maintenance and servicing should primarily be preventative as preventative roof maintenance can even effectively mitigate the need for extensive roofing repairs. As roofing repairs even on a small scale are likely to cost an average home owner at least a few hundred dollars (and, in the case of extensive roof repairs, considerably more), it is within the best interest of the home owner to hire a roofing company to conduct regular roof inspections even if no damage has been sustained or noticed by the home owner.
If you are replacing your roof, you will likely want to take into consideration your options when it comes to roof shingles. Roof shingles range from asphalt shingles to that of the metal roof. Many people are steering away from the typical roof shingles and choosing a metal roof instead for a number of reasons. For one, the metal roof has been found to be incredibly durable, lasting for as many as fifty years if given the proper care and maintenance. As the vast majority of home owners – around eighty eight percent in total – noted that durability was one of the main components they were looking for in a new roof, this is crucial. Aside from this, a metal roof can actually save money when compared to the typical asphalt material used for roof shingles. Because of the way it reflects light, a metal roof can lower the typical household’s heating bill by as much as twenty five percent of the total annual energy and heating bill.
From the installation of a new roof to picking out the material for your roof shingles and preventing damage through regular inspection of said roof by roofing professionals, there are many things to consider when it comes to the overall upkeep of your roof. But this upkeep is more than worth it as, after all, the roof is integral to the stability and security of your home.
