“Is it time yet?” is one of the hardest questions to answer about your own house. A roof rarely fails on a single day. It gets a little older, it gives up a little more each season, and the question of whether it is finished creeps up on you.
So we wrote our scale down. Eight factors, a hundred points, published where anyone can check the arithmetic. You can score your own shingle roof at hipporoof.com/repair-or-replace/ in about two minutes and see exactly how the number is reached.
Here is the thinking behind it.
The eight things that matter, and what they are worth
Age, worth 22 points. The single strongest predictor, and the one people most want to argue with. A roof that looks fine at twenty is still a roof at twenty. Materials tire, sealant hardens, fasteners work. Age also carries weight for a reason that has nothing to do with the shingles, which we come back to below.
Curling, worth 19 points. A shingle is manufactured to stay flexible, and years of Florida heat drive that flexibility out of it. Once a shingle has curled, it does not lie back down. There is no repair for it, and a roof that has curled across its slopes has generally finished its working life. It is worth having the attic ventilation looked at while you are there, because heat held under the deck is one of the things that ages a roof this way, which is why a baked roof and a hot attic so often turn up on the same house.
Exposed fiberglass mat, worth 19 points. The easiest one to walk straight past, because it does not look like damage. Under the granules is a fiberglass mat. Once you can see it, that shingle has no protection left, and no repair puts granules back. Patching there buys time and nothing else.
Granule loss, worth 15 points. Those granules are not decoration. They are the shingle’s sunscreen and its armor. When they wash into your gutters, the asphalt underneath starts taking Florida sun directly. A little grit after a storm is ordinary. Gutters that fill with it are a clock running out.
Flashing and penetrations, worth 8 points. Vents, skylights, chimneys, and where the roof meets a wall. Here is the honest part: flashing is the most common source of roof leaks and it is usually a repair. It is weighted low on purpose. A leak at a pipe boot is not a reason to replace a roof. It belongs in the repair column, and it is worth knowing that before you look at any number.
Animals and entry points, worth 8 points. In Brevard this is no footnote. Roof rats, squirrels and the openings they use are among the most common calls we take, and the damage is real. Weighted for urgency rather than for replacement, because nearly all of it is repair work. There is a law involved too, and we come to that below.
Gutters and the roof edge, worth 6 points. Ordinary maintenance right up until it turns structural. A gutter left clogged long enough rots the fascia and the eave while the rest of the roof is still fine.
Algae and growth, worth 3 points. The lowest weight on the scale, and we expect that to surprise people, because black streaking is what homeowners notice first. Streaking is mostly cosmetic. It makes a roof look tired and it makes a roof darker, which costs you reflectance, but it is rarely what ends a roof. Moss and plants are a different matter, because they hold moisture against the surface.
This scale is for asphalt shingle roofs. Metal and tile age differently.
One more thing worth saying. Whatever a roof scores, it is not a report card on how someone has kept their house. Florida weather is hard on roofs in a way most of the country never sees, and sun, salt air, wind and an eleven month growing season age a roof here faster than the same roof anywhere else. A high score usually means the roof has been doing its job for a long time.
Add them up. Under 25 is healthy. Twenty-five to 49 means repair what is failing. Fifty to 74 means repairs still make sense and you should get a replacement number in writing while it is a decision rather than an emergency. Above 75, a roof has usually given the years it was built to give, and planning the replacement beats waiting for a storm to schedule it.
The animal section, and the law nobody mentions
Roof rats and squirrels are a Brevard staple, and the University of Florida’s extension service is blunt about the stakes. Roof rats “thrive in attics, roof spaces, palm trees, and ornamental shrubbery” and “can be quite destructive in attics, gnawing on electrical wires and rafters.” Chewed wiring is a fire risk, not an inconvenience.
They need very little room. UF puts it at half an inch for a rat and a quarter inch for a mouse, which is a soffit seam or a lifted piece of fascia. For closing those openings UF recommends sheet metal of 26 gauge or heavier, or hardware cloth of 19 gauge or heavier with openings no larger than a quarter inch. Foam and caulk are not rodent-proofing. They get chewed through.
The order matters too. Seal while the animals are still inside and you have shut them into your attic, which is considerably worse than where you started.
Then there are bats, where the calendar decides what is legal.
Bats are protected in Florida under Florida Administrative Code rules 68A-4.001 and 68A-9.010. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission states that it is illegal to evict or exclude bats during maternity season, which runs April 16 through August 14. So for four months a year, sealing a bat entry point is against the law regardless of how badly you want it closed. Outside that window, exclusion is done with one-way exit devices, and FWC says the netting or tubing should stay up at least four warm nights with temperatures forecast to reach at least 50 degrees.
During maternity season you can still seal openings the bats are not using and bat-proof the interior. What you cannot do is close the colony out.
This is an easy one to get wrong, because a soffit opening looks the same in June as it does in November.
On lizards, since we get asked: the geckos and anoles are a nuisance rather than a roofing concern. They do not gnaw wood or wiring and they do not make their own openings. If they are getting into your soffit, something else made the hole. Find that.
How a clogged gutter takes out a roof edge
Florida has no ice dams, so the northern explanation of this does not apply here. Ours is slower.
A gutter packed with leaves, pine needles and granules stops being a channel and becomes a trough. In a Florida downpour the water goes over the front, down the fascia, and back toward the roof edge.
The fascia takes constant water and softens, which is also where squirrels start chewing, which is why gutters and animals turn up on the same roof so often. Standing water sits at the level of the drip edge and the lowest shingle course, so that course never fully dries between rains. And debris dams push water back under that first course, the one place on a roof where the slope is working against you instead of for you.
What that leaves is decay at the eave while the field of the roof is still perfectly good. It is the clearest example we know of a repair that can easily be mistaken for a replacement.
Clearing gutters twice a year in Brevard is the cheapest roof maintenance there is, and it protects the part of the roof that is hardest to replace.
Two Florida laws that decide more than the shingles do
This part is specific to this state, and it rarely comes up until someone is already deciding.
The 25 percent rule. Florida law says that if an existing roofing system or roof section was built, repaired or replaced to the 2007 Florida Building Code or any later edition, and 25 percent or more of it is repaired, replaced or recovered, only the repaired portion has to meet the code in effect today.
Read that backwards and you find the trap. If your roof pre-dates the 2007 code, crossing the 25 percent line pulls the entire roofing system up to current code. On plenty of older Brevard homes, that converts a large repair into a full replacement by operation of law, regardless of what anyone would have chosen.
So on an older roof, the size of the damaged area is not only a cost question. It decides which project you are doing. That is worth knowing before you authorize work. (Fla. Stat. 553.844(5).)
Roof age and your policy at renewal. Florida law says an insurer may not refuse to issue or renew a homeowner’s policy on a home with a roof less than 15 years old solely because of the age of the roof. For an older roof, an insurer also may not refuse solely on age if an inspection by an authorized inspector shows the roof has 5 years or more of useful life remaining.
That is why age carries the most weight on our scale. A roof can look perfectly acceptable from the driveway and still turn into a renewal conversation. (Fla. Stat. 627.7011.)
This is about underwriting and renewal, not claims. Whether to file a claim is your decision with your insurance company, and by law a roofer may not interpret your policy or adjust your claim.
Three questions almost nobody can answer about their own roof
Everything above is about a roof you are already worried about. These three are about the roof you are not worried about, which is where the expensive surprises actually start.
Is anyone measuring your ventilation? Not whether you have vents. Whether anyone has measured what they are doing lately. A working attic holds within roughly 20 degrees of the outdoor temperature, and more than 40 degrees above it means ventilation has failed. That reading only means something taken on a sunny afternoon with both temperatures measured at the same moment. It is not a number that turns up on its own. Somebody has to go and take it, and take it again later, because the comparison over time is where the meaning is. Heat in an attic is not only a cooling bill. It ages the shingles above it from underneath.
Is anyone watching for animals? Roof rats and squirrels do not announce themselves. The opening is a half inch at a soffit seam, and the first real symptom is usually noise at night or an electrician finding chewed wire. By then it has been going on for months. A quarterly look along the soffit, fascia and eave line catches an opening while it is still a piece of trim.
Is anyone tracking your attic humidity, and what it is doing to the decking? The one that hides longest, and it matters because of what sits underneath. A leak small enough to never show on a ceiling can still keep the deck damp. So can a bath fan venting into the attic instead of outside, which is more common than it should be. Temperature alone will not show you either one. Humidity will, well before a stain reaches drywall.
The decking is the part worth protecting. Shingles are a surface, and replacing them is a known number you can plan around. The plywood underneath is structure. Wood held damp over long stretches loses strength and stops gripping a fastener properly, and soft decking is generally not discovered until the old roof is off and someone is standing on it. At that point it is a change order in the middle of your project rather than a line you budgeted for. That is the real reason to watch moisture. It has little to do with the air in the attic and everything to do with keeping the most expensive part of the roof out of the conversation.
Most homeowners answer no to all three. That is not a failing on anyone’s part. It is that none of it announces itself. So when someone is next on your roof, ask them: are you measuring my attic against the outdoor temperature, are you checking my soffit line for openings, and are you tracking the moisture up there. If the answer is no three times, you are finding out about things after they have already cost you.
Why we would publish a scale that talks us out of work
Because it does not, over a long enough window.
A roof replaced ten years early is a customer who works out what happened, eventually, and never calls again. Brevard is not a large enough county to make that trade profitably. We would rather do the repair, be right, and be the company they call in eight years when the answer really is a replacement.
The scale also settles arguments in our favor when we are right. When a homeowner scores their own roof at 80 and a Roofing Consultant scores it at 82 standing on the ridge with photographs, nobody has to take anyone’s word for anything.
What happens at the visit
Score your roof, then bring the number. A Roofing Consultant runs the same eight factors on the actual roof, scores it the same way, and leaves the sheet with you. If our number and yours are far apart, you see the photographs of why.
If the answer is a repair, we will share that and quote the repair.
If the answer is a replacement, you will see both of our systems, HippoShield™ and DefenderRoof®, with both prices in writing, and you choose.
Score your roof here, or schedule a free roof visit and we will score it with you.
