Roofing

Sizing a Dumpster for a Roof Tear-Off in Bristol

Roofing is where sizing goes wrong most often, and around here it is usually one of two things: a hidden second layer, or slate.

The one number that matters: squares

Roofers measure in squares. One square is 100 square feet of roof surface. A typical Bristol-area single-family runs somewhere between 18 and 30 squares, though the older housing tends toward steeper pitches and more complex roof lines than the number alone suggests.

If you do not know your square count, your roofer does, and it is the first thing to ask.

What a square of roofing weighs

Run the arithmetic on a shingle roof. A 26 square architectural shingle roof at 350 lb per square is roughly 9,100 pounds — over four and a half tons before underlayment. That is a 20 yard with very little headroom, and none at all if the sheathing is coming off too.

That plank sheathing line matters here. Pre-war houses have board sheathing rather than plywood, and where it has to be replaced it adds real tonnage that a modern estimate would not include.

Shingle sizing table

Slate is a different calculation

Slate roofs are not rare on older Connecticut housing, and they are the heaviest thing we handle.

At 800 to 1,500 pounds per square, a 20 square slate roof can be twelve tons or more — far past what any single container can legally carry.

Two further points. Slate breaks as it comes off, so it occupies more volume than the intact roof suggests while weighing the same. And if the slate is in reusable condition it may be worth salvaging — there is a genuine market for reclaimed slate, and a roofer working on old houses will know it.

If there is slate on the roof, say so at the booking stage. We will plan the swap schedule rather than discovering it when the first container cannot be lifted.

The second layer problem

Plenty of houses here have a second layer of shingle laid over the original, and it roughly doubles the tear-off weight.

Look at the rake edge from the ground, where a double layer often shows as a noticeably thicker band, and ask your roofer to confirm during the inspection. If it turns out on the day, call us — a swap mid-job is far cheaper than an overloaded container that cannot be hauled.

On the oldest houses you occasionally find shingle over shingle over the original cedar shake, which is three layers and a genuinely different job.

Ice dam damage is bigger than the stain

The local factor, and the one that most often turns a straightforward tear-off into a bigger job.

Ice dams form when heat escaping through the roof melts snow, the meltwater runs down to the cold eave, refreezes, and backs water up under the shingles. The ceiling stain inside is the visible part. The invisible part is the soaked sheathing, wet insulation and sometimes rotted rafter tails at the eave.

Two consequences for the container:

Wet material weighs a multiple of dry. Saturated sheathing and insulation can easily double the weight of the section they came from. If water got in, tell us and we size for weight rather than volume.

The scope grows. A roof that also needs eave sheathing, fascia, soffit and insulation replaced produces considerably more debris than a straight tear-off. It is worth having the container sized for the possibility rather than the plan.

If you are re-roofing after ice dam trouble, the underlying cause is nearly always attic ventilation and insulation rather than the roof covering itself. Worth fixing at the same time.

Placement, and the nail problem

Roofing containers need to sit close to the house, and placement varies across our area.

• Bristol's suburban streets, Southington, Cheshire, Prospect. Generous driveways, straightforward placement tight to the drip line.
• Plainville, the older Waterbury and Torrington neighbourhoods, village centres. Tight lots and short drives. A 15 yard with a swap is often the only workable shape.
• The hill towns. Long drives, grade and mature canopy. The truck needs roughly twenty-two feet of clear overhead to raise its bed.

Everywhere: boards go under the rails as standard, and a tear-off sheds an enormous quantity of nails. A magnet sweep of the driveway and street at the end of the job is twenty minutes well spent, and it is the single most common complaint homeowners have about roofing work.

The short New England season

Asphalt shingle needs warmth to seal properly, which compresses the roofing year here into roughly April through November, with the busiest stretch late summer into autumn as people race the weather.

Practical consequences:

• Book early in the season if you can. By September every roofer and every hauler in the valley is stretched.
• Winter tear-offs happen — storm damage does not wait — but they are emergency work, and the container needs a plowable, accessible placement that will still be reachable after the next snowfall.
• Watch the spring thaw on unpaved drives. A loaded roofing container on a gravel drive in the soft weeks of March is how access gets ruined. More on that here.

If you are a roofing contractor, a standing arrangement with a local hauler is worth a great deal in the autumn crunch. We hold capacity for contractors who work with us regularly and we are straight with them when we are stretched.