Appleton Roof Pros: Roof Replacement, Repair and Porch Roofs
Expert residential and commercial roofing services. Free inspections that price the porch and the ell apart from the main roof.
- Dwelling Contractor and Qualifier numbers printed on the estimate, not recited over the phone
- Each section gets the material its measured pitch actually permits, which is rarely one material
- Free inspection that begins on the lowest roof on the house rather than the highest
- Written workmanship warranty with a separate term stated for each roof section
Our Roofing Services in Appleton, WI
Roof Replacement
A replacement on an older Appleton house is two jobs sold as one. The steep main block takes shingles.
Roof Leak Repair
Most leaks we are called to in the older parts of town are not in the middle of a roof. They are at a joint, and usually at the joint where a shallow roof dies into a wall carrying the runoff from everything above it.
Storm Damage Restoration
Storm work here goes wrong in a predictable way. The main field gets inspected, photographed and scoped, and the porch, the ell, the sunroom and the garage get counted as part of the same roof or left off the paperwork completely.
Hail Damage Roofing
Hail leaves different marks on the two roofs your house has. On a laminated shingle it shows as a bruise you find with your thumb.
Wind Damage Roofing
Wind takes roofs apart at the edges, and on this housing stock the edges are the oldest part of the assembly. The field may have been redone twice.
Roof Inspections
Our inspection runs in an unusual order. We start on the lowest roof on the house and work up, because on Appleton's older blocks that is where the material is most often wrong for the pitch and where the money is going to be.
Asphalt Shingle Roofs
Asphalt is the right answer on the steep part of nearly every house in this city, and the wrong answer on a good share of the shallow parts. Where the line falls is not an opinion.
Metal Roofing
Metal is the best product available for the shallow roofs on this housing stock and a harder argument on the steep ones. We sell far more porch and ell metal than whole-house metal, and that is a deliberate recommendation rather than an accident of demand.
Tile Roofing
On this page we usually argue against our own product. Tile is a serious roof and there are real examples of it here, but on the great majority of Appleton houses a conversion is the wrong purchase and we say so early.
Flat and Low-Slope Roofing
This is the page that matters most on an Appleton house, and on almost every other roofing site it is written about warehouses. Here the low-slope roof is residential: the front porch, the kitchen ell, the sunroom, the back stoop, the shed dormer and the garage off the alley.
Roof Coatings and Sealing
A coating is a maintenance product with a narrow correct use. Applied to a sound low-slope roof that is simply weathering, it is genuinely the cheapest right answer on the property.
Roof Ventilation
Ventilation advice on most roofing sites assumes a house with one attic under one field. Half the roof area we deal with in the older wards has no attic at all, and the standard advice does not simply underperform there.
Skylights
Skylights fail in this climate for two reasons: the unit was mounted flat to the deck on a slope that required a curb, or the flashing was assembled out of sealant instead of metal. Both are installation decisions, and both are avoidable.
Gutters and Downspouts
The gutter problem on a two-roof house is not the gutter. It is where the upper roof puts its water, and on a great many Appleton houses the answer is straight onto the porch roof, the ell or the entry canopy below.
Fascia and Soffit
Rot on these houses starts low and starts at the porch. The fascia around a porch roof, the beam it sits on and the tops of the columns carrying that beam are the wettest wood on the building and the furthest from anyone's attention.
Chimney Flashing
A very large share of the chimneys we flash in this city no longer do anything. High-efficiency furnaces and water heaters vent out a sidewall, and the brick stack they replaced stays where it is, still penetrating the roof and still leaking.
Emergency Tarping
Emergency work splits by slope here, and the split matters. A tarp over a steep field, run over the ridge and battened, is a good temporary roof.
Commercial Roofing
Commercial roofs downtown have the same shape problem the houses do, at a larger scale. A College Avenue block is typically a main roof, a lower rear wing added at some point in the last century, and a party wall shared with the building next door.
Insurance Claim Help
We are roofers, not public adjusters, and Wisconsin draws a real line between the two. What we do is document a roof accurately, meet your adjuster on site, and make sure every section of your house is in the scope.
Appleton Roof Pros is a licensed and insured roofing company serving Appleton, Wisconsin. We handle roof replacement, leak repair, storm damage, inspections and commercial low-slope work, installing architectural laminate shingles, 24-gauge standing seam metal, and modified bitumen, EPDM and TPO membrane. Estimates are free, written, and itemized by roof section rather than handed over as one number.
Repair work covers apron and step flashing, valley metal, pipe boots, chimney counterflashing, skylight curbs, K-style aluminum gutter, fascia, soffit and winter dry-ins. Replacements come off to the deck. Soft sheathing is swapped by the sheet at a rate quoted in advance, and every low-slope section on the house gets its own material named in the scope instead of being folded silently into the shingle price.
Most houses here are two roofs, not one. The main block runs steep and sheds fast. Bolted to it sits a full-width porch, a kitchen ell or a back stoop at a pitch far below anything a shingle is rated for, tied into a wall where the water off the whole upper roof concentrates. We measure both, price both, and say plainly which one is actually failing.
What Appleton Customers Say
I had three estimates. Only theirs said a word about the back kitchen wing. Turned out that was the roof leaking into my dining room. They did that section, told me the main roof could wait, and put the estimate for it in the folder for later.
They pulled two rows of siding above the porch and showed me the flashing just tucked under and caulked. Twenty years of that. New metal went in behind the siding properly and the ceiling stain has not come back through two springs.
I asked for the whole roof in standing seam. They talked me down to metal on the porch and the shed dormer with shingles everywhere else, which saved a serious amount of money and honestly looks better. Not many contractors argue themselves out of work.
The report had a numbered diagram with the pitch written on every plane, which my adjuster actually used. The membrane over the sunroom had been left off the original scope entirely and it went back on because of that diagram.
Why Appleton Chooses Appleton Roof Pros
- ✓We put a level on every roof section and write the pitch on the estimate, because the number below 2:12 is what decides whether a shingle is even permitted up there.
- ✓The front porch, the kitchen ell and the back stoop get their own line, their own material and their own price. One figure for the whole address hides the part that is actually failing.
- ✓Where a shallow roof meets a wall we lift a course of siding and put the flashing behind it. Metal slipped under the existing course and caulked along the top edge is the most common defect we find on the pre-1940 blocks.
- ✓We tell owners the main field has years left in it. Quite often the appendage needs doing now and the field does not, and writing that down costs us the bigger sale on purpose.
- ✓No shingles below 2:12, no roll roofing on a porch you intend to keep, and no clay or concrete tile on framing that no engineer has looked at.
- ✓Appleton publishes a siding permit application and no roofing one. Replacing a covering is not the trigger; rebuilding the structure underneath is, and we say which one you have before a crew is booked.
About Appleton Roof Pros in Appleton, WI
Appleton Roof Pros works Appleton, Grand Chute, Greenville, Harrison, Combined Locks, Buchanan, Freedom and the surrounding Outagamie, Calumet, Waupaca and Shawano county communities. Nothing about the basic craft is exotic: strip the covering, repair what the covering was hiding, flash every joint in metal, fasten to the rating and leave the site clean.
The part that is local is the shape of the houses. Appleton grew up around the mills on the Fox River, and the blocks nearest downtown are full of nineteenth and early twentieth century houses with a steep main block and something shallow hung off it. The City Park Historic District alone holds 141 contributing properties built between 1867 and 1949. Every one of those addresses is at least two roofing problems, and almost nobody prices them that way.
Do not hire us if you want the porch shingled to match at a pitch that will not hold shingles, because we will refuse. Do not hire us if you want a coating brushed over a membrane we have probed and found wet. And if the field on your main roof has eight good years left, we would rather fix the ell, write down what we saw and come back later than sell you the whole address this season.
How It Works
- 1
We Start on the Lowest Roof
The first thing we stand on is the porch or the ell, not the ridge. That is where the leaks are, where the material is usually wrong for the pitch, and where the wall above it tells you whether the flashing was ever done. From down there we can also see the underside of the upper roof's edge.
- 2
The Pitch Number Chooses the Material
We put a two-foot level and a rule on each roof section and write the rise down. Anything under 2:12 cannot legitimately take a shingle, anything from 2:12 to 4:12 needs doubled underlayment, and knowing which planes are which is what stops the wrong product going on the cheap half of your house.
- 3
A Scope That Separates the Sections
The proposal lists the main field, each low-slope section, and each tie-in as its own line with its own material, its own flashing method and its own price. You cannot weigh one bid against another unless both admit the porch is a separate roof carrying its own expected life.
- 4
Tear-Off, Flash, Dry In, Clean Up
Plants and gutters get covered, the sections come off in an order that leaves nothing open overnight, and siding is lifted where a wall flashing has to go behind it rather than under it. We roll the yard, the drive and the terrace with a magnet before the trailer leaves.
Commercial Roofing in Appleton and Across the Fox Cities
We roof and maintain College Avenue storefronts, converted mill and warehouse space along the river, clinics and dental offices, restaurants, self-storage, churches, school buildings and apartment blocks across Outagamie and Calumet counties. Downtown buildings here are rarely one roof either.
A storefront block typically has a main roof, a lower rear wing added later, and a party wall between it and the neighbor, and the tie-ins between those three are where the water and the arguments both start. We survey each level separately and log every penetration.
- ✓Membrane in 60 and 80 mil TPO or EPDM, plus two-ply modified bitumen
- ✓Polyisocyanurate to the specified R-value with tapered packages for fall
- ✓Through-wall counterflashing and reglets at party walls and parapets
- ✓Rear-wing and lower-level roofs surveyed and quoted as their own assemblies
- ✓Roof access mapped in advance where the only route is through tenant space
- ✓Core cuts and probe readings before any coating recommendation is made
- ✓Phased work with a nightly dry-in so tenants keep trading
- ✓Twice-yearly maintenance visits with a photographed condition log
Service Areas
Appleton Roof Pros serves Appleton, WI and surrounding communities including:
Recent Projects Across the Fox Cities
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Appleton require a permit to replace a roof?
Usually not for the covering alone. The city publishes application forms for siding, decks, fences, pools and building alterations, and there is no roofing form among them. What does trigger a building permit is structure: rebuilding a porch roof, framing a dormer, or roofing over a deck. Appleton charges triple the normal fee for work started without one, so we settle which side of that line your job sits on first.
Why is my porch roof leaking when the rest of the roof looks fine?
Because it is a different roof. A porch or ell typically runs somewhere between 1:12 and 3:12, so water crawls rather than runs, and it terminates against a wall carrying the discharge from everything above it. Nine times in ten the failure is the flashing at that wall, not the material in the middle. We open a course of siding to look rather than guessing from the ground.
Can you just shingle the porch to match the house?
Only if the pitch allows it, and on this housing stock it often does not. Below 2:12 no asphalt shingle manufacturer will stand behind the installation, and a matching porch that leaks in four years is a poor trade. Where the look matters we use a soldered flat-lock metal pan or a granulated cap sheet in a color chosen against the shingle, which reads far better than most people expect.
Is my house old enough for this to matter?
Roughly one in five Appleton housing units was built in 1939 or earlier, and another large block went up in the 1940s, according to the Census Bureau's American Community Survey table on year built. Those are the houses with the deep front porches, the rear kitchen wings and the added stoops. Post-1990 subdivisions out toward Greenville and Grand Chute mostly do not have the problem.
Should I replace everything at once or do it in sections?
It depends on which section is dying, and they rarely die together. A porch membrane put on in the 1990s and a laminated shingle field put on in 2012 are on completely different clocks. We are happy to do the low-slope work now and come back for the field in five or six years, and we will put the reasoning and the remaining life estimate in writing so you can hold us to it.
Is a metal roof worth it on an Appleton house?
On the appendages, very often yes. A soldered or mechanically seamed metal pan is the right answer on a shallow porch and it lasts far longer than anything else you can put there. On a whole Queen Anne field full of hips, valleys, dormers and turret work the labor is brutal and the payback stretches out. We price the porch in metal and the field in asphalt more often than we price either alone.