How to read a Triangle roofing quote: the eight lines that decide the price

You get three quotes for the same roof. One says $11,400, one says $16,900, one says $20,300. Everyone was polite and measured the roof, and nobody seems to be lying.

They usually aren’t. They’re describing different jobs, and the quote is written in a shorthand nobody explains to you. So let me translate.

First: a "square" is 100 square feet

Roofing is priced by the square, not the square foot. A typical Triangle house is somewhere around 20 to 35 squares once you account for pitch and waste. A steeper roof has more surface than its footprint suggests, and a cut-up roof with lots of valleys and dormers wastes more material.

So if one quote says 24 squares and another says 31 for the same house, one of them measured the roof and the other measured the outline of the building. That alone can explain a few thousand dollars, and it’s the first thing to check because it’s the easiest to be wrong about.

The eight lines that actually move the number

1. Tear-off, or going over the top

A layover, nailing new shingles over the old ones, is meaningfully cheaper because it skips the labor and the dumpster. North Carolina permits a second layer in the usual case. It’s still generally the wrong choice: nobody inspects the decking, the new roof runs hotter and ages faster, and some manufacturers won’t warrant it.

More to the point, a layover is a decision you can only make once. The next roof is a tear-off no matter what, and it’s a more expensive one.

If a cheap quote is cheap because it’s a layover, it isn’t the same job. Ask.

2. Decking replacement, the surprise bill

Nobody knows what the plywood under your shingles looks like until the shingles are off. That’s not evasion; it’s physically true.

What separates a good quote from a bad one is whether it says what a sheet costs. A quote that names a unit price ("$85 per 4×8 sheet, replaced as needed, you approve the count") is a quote you can trust. A quote that’s silent on it is where a $14,000 job becomes $17,500 on a Tuesday, with the roof already open and no room left to say no.

Ask for the unit price in writing. Ask to be shown the bad sheets, or sent photos. Any roofer who’s annoyed by that question has told you something useful.

3. Underlayment

The layer between deck and shingle. Synthetic costs more than traditional felt, doesn’t tear when it’s walked on wet, and doesn’t wrinkle. If one quote is cheaper here, it’s usually 15lb felt.

4. Ice and water shield

A self-adhering membrane in the valleys, along the eaves, and around every penetration. We don’t get many ice dams here, but we get wind-driven rain and summer storms that push water uphill under shingles, and the valleys are where your roof concentrates every gallon that lands on it.

Skipping it is invisible on day one and expensive in year six.

5. Drip edge, starter strip, and the edges generally

Current residential code in North Carolina requires drip edge at the eaves and rakes. It’s a cheap piece of metal that stops water curling back onto the fascia, and it is routinely left off.

Starter strip matters for the same reason: the first course needs a proper sealed starter rather than a row of shingles cut up on site. The edges of a roof are where wind gets a grip, and wind is what takes Triangle roofs off.

6. Nails: six per shingle, driven right

Most shingle wind warranties require six nails per shingle, placed in the nail line. The count matters, but the most common installation defect in the trade is something else: overdriven nails, where the gun’s pressure is set too high and the nail head cuts through the shingle instead of clamping it. The shingle is then held on by adhesive and hope.

You cannot see this from the ground, ever, and it’s the reason the crew matters more than the brand of shingle.

7. Ventilation, done as a system

A ridge vent needs soffit intake to work. Exhaust without intake doesn’t ventilate the attic. It pulls conditioned air out of your house through every ceiling gap, which is worse than the problem it was sold to fix.

If a quote adds ridge venting, it should say something about intake. If it doesn’t, that’s a conversation.

8. Pipe boots and flashing

On a fifteen-year-old Triangle roof, the leak is usually not the shingles. It’s the rubber boot around a plumbing vent, which cracks in UV long before the roof wears out, or it’s step flashing at a wall that somebody caulked instead of replacing.

Boots and flashing should be replaced with the roof rather than reused. A quote that says "reuse existing flashing" is saving you about $200 and handing you the most likely failure point of the entire assembly.

The two warranties, only one of which matters much

Every quote will mention a manufacturer warranty, often with a big number attached. That covers defective shingles, which is a rare failure. It’s usually prorated, so its value drops each year, and the big number is close to marketing.

The one that matters is the workmanship warranty, the roofer’s own promise to fix what they installed wrong. Installation error is what actually goes wrong with roofs, far more often than a material defect.

And a workmanship warranty is worth exactly as much as the company’s remaining lifespan. A ten-year promise from a business that won’t see year three is just a sentence on paper. This is boring and it’s the most useful thing on the page: check how long they’ve actually been trading, and check that the license and insurance are real and current.

That’s most of what our profiles are for. Umstead Roofing & Exteriors in Durham lists 2010 as its founding year; Evergreen Roof Co in Wake Forest lists 2013. You can see the full field on our lists of Raleigh roofing companies and Durham roofing companies, where the grade reflects license status, insurance and review history rather than who’s paying us.

Two red flags worth walking away from

"We’ll cover your deductible." If your roof is an insurance claim, this offer comes up, and it is not a discount. Your deductible is your share of the loss; a contractor absorbing it and billing the insurer the full amount is fraud, and the homeowner is a party to it. A company willing to defraud your insurer on your behalf is telling you exactly how it handles paperwork it thinks nobody checks.

The storm-chaser knocking after hail. Not all of them are bad. But ask where the office is, ask who honors the workmanship warranty in 2031, and check the license. Work over $40,000 generally requires a licensed general contractor in North Carolina, and you can look any of them up against the state registry in about a minute.

Before you sign

• Get the squares count, and check the three quotes agree on it.

• Get the decking unit price in writing.

• Confirm tear-off vs layover. It’s the biggest single price difference.

• Confirm boots and flashing are replaced rather than reused.

• Ask who pulls the permit. If the answer is "you do", that’s not a roofing company.

• Ask for the workmanship warranty term, in writing, and ask how long they’ve been trading.

• Don’t pay the balance until you’ve seen the finished job and been given a lien waiver.

None of this requires you to know anything about roofing. It just requires the quote to say what it’s actually selling, and the good ones already do.