Roofing Contractor in Florham Park, NJ

Florham Park homes and the 1950s building wave

Florham Park became a borough in 1899, and its name is a blend of two first names: Florence Vanderbilt Twombly and Hamilton McKown Twombly, whose estate, Florham, gave the town its name. For its first half century it stayed small and largely rural.

That changed fast after World War II. The Census counted 2,385 residents in 1950 and 7,222 in 1960, roughly three times as many in ten years. Many of the ranches, split-levels and colonials on Florham Park's residential streets date from that wave and the decades right after it.

Houses from that era were built with more going through the roof than people realize: a plumbing vent stack for every bathroom group, a flue for the furnace and water heater, bath and kitchen exhaust, a masonry chimney on many, and skylights added in later renovations. Each one is a hole in the roof that has to be sealed, and every one of those seals ages on its own schedule.

Why roof leaks start at penetrations

A field of shingles sheds water well because every course overlaps the one below it. A penetration interrupts that. Wherever a pipe, vent, chimney or skylight passes through, water has to be steered around it by flashing, and flashing depends on parts that wear out faster than shingles do: rubber gaskets, sealant, metal collars and the nails that hold them.

That is why a 15-year-old roof with healthy-looking shingles can still leak over a bathroom. The shingles are fine. The rubber boot around the vent pipe has cracked, and water is running down the outside of the pipe into the attic.

We explain how pipe boots fail, how to spot it and what the right fix is in our guide to roof leaks around plumbing vent pipes.

What this Florham Park job shows

The photo on this page was taken partway through a tear-off in Florham Park. The old shingles are off one side of the roof and still on the other. Two different penetrations are visible on the exposed section:

• A white PVC plumbing vent. This is the drain-waste-vent stack from the plumbing below. On the finished roof it is sealed with a pipe boot, a flashing base with a flexible collar that hugs the pipe.
• A metal vent pipe with a storm collar. The flat metal ring partway up the pipe is the storm collar. It sits above the flashing and sheds water away from the gap where the pipe passes through, so rain running down the pipe cannot follow it into the house.
• The deck around both is bare. With the shingles and underlayment gone, the wood right around each penetration can be checked. That is the wood most likely to have been wet before.

The reason to do this work during a replacement is simple: new flashing has to be woven into the shingles. The top of a pipe flashing goes under the shingles above it and the bottom lies over the shingles below. Doing that properly is easiest when the whole roof is open.

Every penetration, every replacement

On a full roof replacement in Florham Park, these are the openings we look at and re-flash, not just shingle around:

• Plumbing vent boots. Replaced with new boots sized to the pipe. Old cracked collars are not reused.
• Metal flue and vent pipes. New flashing, and the storm collar re-set and sealed above it.
• Bath and kitchen exhaust vents. Roof caps checked and replaced with new flashing where needed.
• Chimneys. Step flashing and counter-flashing inspected, and repaired or replaced. Masonry and crown repairs can be handled by the same crew.
• Skylights. Flashed back into the new roof, or replaced if the unit itself is failing.
• Walls and valleys. Where a roof meets a wall or another roof plane, new step flashing or valley protection goes in with the shingles.

Self-adhering ice and water barrier goes at the eaves and in the valleys, and around penetrations where water collects, before the underlayment and shingles go on.

Roofing and chimney work we do in Florham Park

• Full roof replacement with complete tear-off, deck inspection and repair, new flashing at every penetration and new shingles.
• Roof leak repair at pipe boots, vents, chimneys, skylights, valleys and walls.
• Chimney repair including flashing, crowns and masonry.
• Gutters replaced or re-hung with the new roof.

See all of our work on the services page. If you are planning a replacement, here is how long one usually takes, and here is what happens with the wood deck underneath.

Florham Park roofing questions