Charles Wardell
The author demonstrates the weaving details that set his jo…
Capping the Hips
We bring both sides of the hip up to the ridge and trim them, then cover the intersection with a triangular face piece cut from a wide shingle. Then we add the starter course for the ridge and trim it flush with the triangular piece. With two layers of starter on, we can now install a standard ridge cap.
Job Costs
Here’s a cost breakdown for the roof featured here, which has 30 squares of surface area, about 32 feet of valley, 80 feet of hip caps, and a 55-foot main ridge. The job took around 450 hours of labor over three weeks, which included tearing off the old asphalt roof. The total cost to the client was around $30,000, including materials, labor, and the dumpster fee. The shingles alone cost around $16,000.
As I mentioned above, we went with a tighter 5 1/2-inch exposure, which required seven bundles per square. Had we used a 7-inch two-ply exposure with felt paper interlayment, we would have needed five bundles per square. It also took about a bundle for every 11 feet of ridge. When I bought the shingles in the fall of 2011, they cost about $55 per bundle, or $275 per square at a 5 1/2-inch exposure. (By comparison, red cedar currently costs around $75 per bundle, but there’s more in a bundle, so you only need four per square.) We use 3-1/2 to 4 pounds of 1-3/4-inch, 7/32-inch-diameter nails per square (fatter nails can cause the shingles to split when it gets cold).
We charge $50 per bundle ($250 per square) for installation. I also add an extra $14 per foot for valleys, cheeks, and standard ridge caps. Woven caps are charged at $28 per foot. Each of my guys can put on about two squares of field shingles per day, about 30 feet of standard cap per day, and about 15 feet of woven cap per day.
Stripping the old roof is $150 per square. We charge the same for asphalt and wood; although it obviously takes longer to strip a wood roof, that’s the going rate around here.
Jim Airasian is a roofing and siding contractor from West Tisbury, Mass. Photos by Charles Wardell.