Slate & Tile Roof Restoration in St. Roch, New Orleans
Nineteenth-century shotguns and Creole cottages around St. Roch Avenue and the Campo Santo. Modest, well-built stock, much of it now well past the life of its last roof covering.
- Shotgun and Creole cottage stock
- St. Roch Market and Campo Santo
- Aging coverings, sound framing
St. Roch building stock, and what it means for a roof
St. Roch grew around the St. Roch Chapel and its Campo Santo cemetery, filling in through the later nineteenth century with shotguns, doubles and Creole cottages built for working households. The framing on this stock is generally cypress and generally sound; it is the coverings that have had a harder life.
A great many roofs here are on their last covering cycle — three-tab shingle laid fifteen or twenty years ago, now well into granule loss, with the algae streaking that this climate produces on any aging asphalt roof. The honest conversation in St. Roch is usually about timing a replacement rather than finding a repair, and about what can reasonably be deferred.
Why St. Roch 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.
End-of-life granule loss
Three-tab shingle in this climate loses its granules and goes brittle. Once that starts, patching buys months, not years.
Algae streaking
The black streaking on these roofs is algae feeding on the shingle. It is cosmetic at first and a covering-life issue later.
Vent boot cracking
Rubber plumbing-vent boots perish in the UV load here well before the shingle around them does. A cheap part, a common leak.
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 St. Roch Market, St. Roch Cemetery & Campo Santo, St. Claude Avenue and the surrounding streets. If your address is in St. Roch, it is in the service area — there is no travel surcharge anywhere inside Orleans Parish.
Slate & Tile Roof Restoration near St. Roch
Everything else we do in St. Roch
Slate & Tile Roof Restoration in St. Roch — 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.
How do I know whether to repair or just replace it?
Condition of the covering across the whole roof, not just at the leak. If the shingle is brittle, losing granules and cracking when it is walked, then a repair is money spent on a roof that will need replacing shortly anyway, and we will say so. If the field is sound and one detail has failed, a repair is the right call and we will say that too. Either way you get it in writing after someone has actually been up there.
Slate & Tile Roof Restoration in St. Roch?
Call and we will get someone on the roof, then put what we find in writing.