Roofing Contractor in Penbrook, PA

Twins, semi-detached homes and tight lot lines

Penbrook's housing is mostly early-to-mid twentieth century: twins, semi-detached homes and modest single-family houses on narrow lots, many with rear additions and porch roofs added at various points over the last eighty years.

That produces two recurring roofing problems. First, the shared roof plane on a twin means your roof and your neighbor's meet somewhere, and how that intersection was flashed decides whether one of you is getting water. Second, the low-slope rear additions and porch roofs almost never got the membrane they needed — we regularly find asphalt shingles laid on a two-in-twelve porch roof, which no manufacturer has ever approved.

• Twin and semi-detached roofs where the party-line flashing has never been touched
• Low-slope porch and addition roofs wearing shingles they were never rated for
• Original box gutters and undersized downspouts on the older stock
• Steep grid-street lots that make ladder staging tight

Working on Penbrook's hill

The climb from Herr Street up toward Reservoir Park means many Penbrook properties sit on sloped lots with the rear elevation a full story higher than the front. That changes staging, drainage and where water goes when a gutter fails.

We pay particular attention to downspout discharge here. On a hillside lot, a downspout dumping at the foundation sends water directly toward a basement wall that is already holding back a grade. Extending discharge and correcting the drainage path is often the cheapest useful thing we do on a Penbrook house.

Because the borough is so close to our shop, Penbrook is also where we tend to get called for the fast stuff — a boot that split overnight, shingles off after a summer line storm, a gutter pulled loose by ice. Those calls usually get handled the same day.