Slate & Tile Roof Restoration in Mid-City, New Orleans
Early-1900s bungalows, doubles and shotguns between the bayou and Carrollton Avenue. Much of it flooded in 2005, so coverings and decking here span a very wide range of ages.
- California bungalow and double stock
- City Park and Canal Street corridor
- Mixed post-2005 repair history
Mid-City building stock, and what it means for a roof
Mid-City fills the middle of the bowl between the Bayou St. John ridge and Carrollton Avenue, with City Park on its northern edge. The housing is early-twentieth-century: California bungalows raised on raised basements, two-family doubles, and shotguns, built out largely between 1900 and 1940 as the drainage system made the back-of-town developable.
Most of Mid-City took water in 2005, and the recovery was uneven. On a single block you can find a house rebuilt from the studs with a twenty-year-old roof, one repaired in stages with mixed materials, and one that was largely untouched. There is no single Mid-City roof condition, which is exactly why quoting this neighborhood from a template produces wrong numbers.
Why Mid-City roofs fail the way they do
Three things we see repeatedly on this stock — not a generic list, and not the same three as the next neighborhood over.
Phased post-flood repairs
Roofs repaired in stages as funds allowed have mismatched materials and ages meeting at junctions that were never detailed properly.
Bungalow hip junctions
Hipped bungalow roofs with dormers concentrate water at hip-to-valley junctions, the standard Mid-City failure point.
Attic humidity
Wide-eave bungalows with retrofitted insulation and unchanged ventilation trap humidity against the deck year round.
Keeping a historic roof rather than losing it
A slate or clay tile roof that is shedding units is usually not finished. It is usually telling you something specific, and the specific answer is cheaper than the general one.
- Establish what is actually failing. On most historic roofs the slate outlives the copper. Valleys, step flashing and gutter linings go first, and the symptom presents as a slate problem.
- Match rather than substitute. Replacement slates are matched on color, size and thickness; tile is sourced to profile. The HDLC and the VCC both treat a visible mismatch as a change to the building, not a repair to it.
- Check the fixings, not just the units. Nail fatigue is what makes a slate roof start dropping slates at random rather than in one area. That is a re-fixing job, not a re-roofing job.
- Respect the deck. Original plank decking under a century-old slate roof behaves differently from modern sheathing, and modern underlayment has to be specified to suit it.
- Document for review. Before-and-after photographs and a written material schedule are what a historic-district review actually wants to see.
What the commissions will not accept
Design guidance for the local historic districts is explicit that standing seam metal is typically not an appropriate material to replace asphalt, slate or asbestos roofing. Traditional slate and clay tile are supported for restoration, and modern substitutes are permitted only where they match in material and color. If a contractor proposes stripping your slate for metal because it is quicker, that is a review problem as well as a preservation one.
A re-roofing permit is required in Orleans Parish — and three different commissions may review it
Residential re-roofing permits are applied for through the Department of Safety and Permits. Properties inside a historic district require additional review time before the permit is issued.
Four stages, no surprises
Inspection
Someone goes onto the roof. Not a drive-by, not a satellite image — the covering, the flashing, the valleys and the deck condition, looked at directly.
Diagnosis
What has failed and why, traced to the actual entry point rather than the spot where water shows up inside.
Written scope
What we found, what we propose, and what it costs, in writing with photographs. No number quoted cold over the phone.
The work
Carried out to the agreed scope, dried in each day, site cleared, and documented for your records and your insurer.
Working around City Park, New Orleans Museum of Art, Canal Street and the surrounding streets. If your address is in Mid-City, it is in the service area — there is no travel surcharge anywhere inside Orleans Parish.
Slate & Tile Roof Restoration near Mid-City
Everything else we do in Mid-City
Slate & Tile Roof Restoration in Mid-City — straight answers
Can my slate roof be repaired rather than replaced?
Usually, yes. Slate is one of the few coverings where individual units genuinely can be replaced, and a roof dropping the occasional slate is more often telling you the fixings or the copper valleys are tired than that the slate itself is finished.
Can I put metal on instead? It is cheaper.
Not in a local historic district, in most cases. Design guidance is explicit that standing seam metal is typically not an appropriate replacement for asphalt, slate or asbestos roofing in these districts. Traditional slate and clay tile are supported for restoration, and substitutes have to match in material and color.
How do you match a slate or tile that is no longer made?
On color, size and thickness for slate, and on profile for tile, sourcing salvaged or matched stock rather than putting the nearest available item on the roof. A visible mismatch is treated by the HDLC and the VCC as a change to the building rather than a repair to it.
My house was repaired after Katrina — is the roof from then?
Often partly, and that is worth knowing precisely. Twenty years on, a 2006 or 2007 emergency re-roof is at or past the end of its expected life, and in a lot of cases it was laid quickly over decking that had been wet. We can usually tell from the roof itself what was done when, and that dating matters both for planning a replacement and for any insurance conversation about roof age.
Slate & Tile Roof Restoration in Mid-City?
Call and we will get someone on the roof, then put what we find in writing.