Roofing Contractor in Mountain Lakes, NJ

What makes Mountain Lakes roofs different

Mountain Lakes is not a subdivision. It was designed in 1910 as a year-round residential lake community, and the original homes were built with steeper pitches, varied rooflines and more architectural detail than the ranch and colonial tracts that filled Morris County later. About 454 of the original stucco Hapgood homes still stand, many of them in the National Register historic district that stretches from Pocono Road to the Denville line.

The roofs on these homes tend to share a few traits that affect how they age and how they need to be worked on:

• Steep pitches. Many Hapgood-era roofs are steeper than a standard 6/12 slope. That sheds water and snow well but makes access harder and requires additional safety staging, which adds time.
• Complex rooflines. Dormers, valleys, and intersecting planes create more seams and more places for water to pool or debris to collect.
• Heavy tree cover. Mountain Lakes sits under a dense canopy of oaks, maples and other hardwoods. Leaves and organic debris collect in valleys and along dormers, holding moisture against the shingles.
• Lake-effect moisture. Seven man-made lakes, including Birchwood, Crystal, Mountain and Wildwood, raise the local humidity, especially along the streets that border them.

Roof repair versus replacement on an older home

Many Mountain Lakes homeowners call about a leak or a few blown-off shingles, not a full replacement. On a home that is 80 or 100 years old, the question is always whether a repair will hold or whether the roof has reached the point where patching one area just shifts the next failure somewhere else.

We look at a few things:

1. 1Shingle condition across the whole roof. A repair makes sense when the damage is localized, maybe a valley that catches debris or a flashing that pulled away, and the rest of the shingles are still lying flat with granules intact.
2. 2Deck condition underneath. On an older Mountain Lakes home, the deck may be original plank sheathing rather than plywood. We check from the attic for soft spots, staining or daylight showing through.
3. 3How many layers are on the roof. Some of these homes have had two or three roofs layered over the original without a tear-off. New Jersey allows two layers maximum. If there are already two, a repair is still possible, but the next full job will require a complete tear-off.
4. 4Flashing and penetrations. On complex rooflines, step flashing at walls, chimney flashing and pipe boots are often the real source of a leak, not the shingles. Those can be repaired individually.

If the shingles still have life in them and the deck is sound, a targeted repair can buy years. If the granules are mostly gone, the edges are curled, and more than one area is failing, that is when a replacement makes more financial sense.

Trees, leaves and what they do to a roof

Mountain Lakes has some of the heaviest tree cover in Morris County. The borough was designed around its lakes and wooded terrain, and the canopy has only grown denser over the last century.

The trees look good from the street. From on top of the roof, what you see is organic debris, shade and moisture:

• Leaf dams in valleys and at dormers. Wet leaves pack into roof valleys the way they pack into gutters. They hold water against the shingles and, in winter, freeze into ice that backs up under the shingle edges.
• Moss and algae. Prolonged shade keeps the roof surface damp, which is where moss and algae take hold. Moss lifts shingle edges. Algae shows as dark streaks and holds even more moisture.
• Branch abrasion. Limbs that touch or hang over the roof scrape the granules off shingles in the wind. A few seasons of contact can wear through the surface layer.
• Reduced drying time. A roof in full sun dries in hours after rain. Under a heavy canopy, the north side of a Mountain Lakes home can stay damp for days.

None of this means the roof will fail prematurely if it was installed correctly and is maintained. But it does mean that a Mountain Lakes roof benefits from periodic cleanouts of the valleys and gutters, trimming branches back from the surface, and choosing shingles rated for algae resistance when it is time for a replacement.

What this Mountain Lakes roof repair involved

The photo at the top of this page shows the roof before we worked on it. This is a typical Mountain Lakes scene: an architectural shingle roof that has weathered unevenly under heavy tree canopy. The shingles are graying, and you can see the dense neighborhood canopy in the background.

On this job we replaced the damaged and worn sections, re-sealed the flashing at the wall intersections, and cleared out the debris that had collected in the valleys. The homeowner caught it early enough that the deck underneath was still solid, which kept the scope to a repair rather than a tear-off.

Roofing and chimney work we do in Mountain Lakes

• Roof repair for leaks, wind damage, worn shingles, valley failures and flashing issues.
• Full roof replacement with complete tear-off, deck inspection and repair, ice and water barrier, synthetic underlayment, ventilation corrections, new flashing and new shingles.
• Chimney repair including flashing, crowns and masonry.
• Gutters cleaned, repaired or replaced.
• Skylight and dormer flashing resealed or rebuilt on complex rooflines.

See every service on our services page, or read how long a roof replacement takes.

Mountain Lakes roofing questions