Elgin Roof Pros: Reroofing, Leak Repair and Historic District Work
Expert residential and commercial roofing services. Material, color and approvals settled on paper before a single bundle is ordered.
- ✓Illinois roofing license and notarized letter of intent already on file at Elgin City Hall
- ✓We check the historic district and landmark map for your parcel before quoting a material
- ✓Every estimate names the covering and counts the layers already on the roof
- ✓We tell you when the city rehabilitation grant will not cover your roof, and usually it will not
Elgin Roof Pros covers roof replacement, leak repair, storm damage and reroofing across the city and the towns around it. We install architectural laminate and 3-tab asphalt, sawn cedar shingles, standing seam and flat-seam metal, clay tile and low-slope membrane, and we repair the pressed metal and slate roofs that came with the older housing stock.
Elgin asks two questions on a re-roofing permit that most contractors answer by guessing: what material is going on, and how many layers are already up there. Two or more layers means a full tear-off, not a re-cover, and that changes the number at the bottom of the estimate. We climb up and count before we quote, so the figure you sign is the figure the permit supports.
If the address is a landmark or sits in one of the city's five designated districts, a Certificate of Appropriateness comes before the permit and before the material order. It is free and it takes time, and it decides your shingle profile, your color, your gutter shape and where a skylight may go. We treat that paperwork as part of the quote rather than as something discovered later.
Why Elgin Chooses Elgin Roof Pros
- ✓We count layers at the eave before pricing, because two or more means a full tear-off under the code Elgin enforces and no re-cover is available to you.
- ✓Certificate applications are drawn from the same scope we quote from, so the material and color on the approval match the material and color on your contract.
- ✓We do not order shingles before an approval is in hand, since any change to approved work has to be re-approved before materials are bought.
- ✓Our flashing is metal at every wall, valley, chimney and penetration, because the guideline manual specifically rejects caulk and bituminous coating as a substitute.
- ✓We will talk you out of replacing an original pressed metal or slate roof that can still be repaired, even though replacement is the larger invoice for us.
- ✓No storm chasing and no door knocking after hail, and no adjuster of ours standing in your kitchen telling you what your policy says.
About Elgin Roof Pros in Elgin, IL
Elgin Roof Pros works on a housing stock that runs from 1850s Greek Revival through Italianate, Second Empire, Queen Anne and Stick-style houses, into blocks of brick worker's flats and frame worker's cottages, and out to whole neighborhoods of 1920s bungalows. Roofs on that stock are steep, cut up, and often carrying original material that a tear-off crew would happily throw in a dumpster.
We are an Illinois-licensed roofing contractor with the license and the notarized letter of intent already on file at 150 Dexter Court, which is what the city requires before it will take a permit application on your address. We read the design guideline manual because it is the document that decides whether an approval comes back, and we would rather quote from it than argue with it afterward.
Do not hire us if you want a bid over the phone, a re-cover on a roof that already carries two layers, or a crew that will start Monday on a landmark address. None of those are legal here and we will not pretend otherwise. If your roof is simply worn out and you are outside the districts, this is a straightforward job and you should treat it as one.
Our Roofing Services in Elgin, IL
Roof Replacement
A roof replacement in Elgin starts with two numbers the city will ask for anyway: what is going on the house, and how many layers are already up there. We get both before we price, because the second one decides whether you are buying a re-cover or a tear-off.
Roof Leak Repair
Most leaks in this city are not holes in a field of shingles. They are junctions: a wall meeting a roof, a chimney with no counterflashing, a valley that was laced when it should have been open, a porch roof tied badly into a two-story wall.
Storm Damage Restoration
Storm work in a city with design review runs on a clock most contractors never look at. A Certificate of Appropriateness expires six months from the day it is approved, and in northern Illinois the window for a proper tear-off closes well before that on a job approved in autumn.
Hail Damage Roofing
Hail rarely hits a house evenly. It arrives on a bearing, and the slope facing it takes bruising while the opposite slope stays sound.
Wind Damage Roofing
Wind finds the same places on these houses every time. The west and southwest slopes take it first, ridge caps go before field shingles, and the rake edge peels where a starter course was never turned up the gable.
Roof Inspections
An inspection here should return three answers, and we write all three down. How many layers are on the roof, what the covering actually is, and whether the parcel is a local landmark or falls inside one of Elgin's five designated districts.
Asphalt Shingle Roofs
Asphalt is the right answer on most Elgin roofs, districts included. The guidelines allow substitute materials such as asphalt or fiberglass shingles where the original covering is gone or where keeping it is not economically feasible.
Metal Roofing
Here is where we talk you out of the more expensive product. Metal shingles are named in Elgin's guidelines as a historic roof material, alongside clay tile and slate, and the instruction is that they should be repaired and preserved rather than replaced.
Tile Roofing
Clay tile is uncommon in Elgin but it is not absent, and where it survives it tends to be original. The guidelines put it in the same sentence as slate and metal shingles: repair and preserve, and consider asphalt only if repair is no longer practical.
Flat & Low-Slope Roofing
Almost every roofing site in the country tells you the same thing about a low-slope roof: put a membrane on it. In Elgin's districts the answer depends on whether the street can see it, and the guideline manual is specific about that.
Roof Coatings & Sealing
We refuse this sale more often than we make it, and on district properties the city has refused it already. The guidelines say flashing at roof-to-wall junctions, chimneys, skylights, vent pipes, valleys and hips should be metal rather than caulk or bituminous coating, which weathers and lets moisture through.
Roof Ventilation
The standard advice everywhere is that when you fit a continuous ridge vent you block the gable louvers, so the ridge does not short-circuit and draw its air from the gable instead of the eaves. In Elgin's districts you cannot.
Skylights
If your house is a landmark or sits in a designated district and you want a skylight on the front slope, the answer is no. We will not take a deposit and find out slowly.
Gutters & Downspouts
Six-inch seamless K-style is what nearly every crew hangs by default, and on a district address it is often the wrong product. Elgin's guidelines say gutters should be half-round rather than K or ogee where they are the hang-on type, with ogee permitted if the fascia is vertical.
Fascia & Soffit
Wrapping a fascia in aluminum coil is a twenty-minute solution that ends the argument about painting. On an Elgin district house it also buries the crown molding, the bed molding and the rafter tails that make the eave read as what it is.
Chimney Flashing
There is a piece of advice given on roofing sites all over the Midwest: that unused chimney is a leak with a hat on, take it down below the deck line and sheet over it. On a landmark or district property in Elgin that advice is not available to you.
Emergency Tarping
A tarp is temporary protection and does not need design review. The permanent repair underneath it does, and the gap between those two facts is why tarps in this city have to be built to last months rather than a weekend.
Commercial Roofing
Elgin draws a line that catches a lot of small landlords by surprise. At an owner-occupied single-family house, the homeowner may pull the permit and do the work.
Insurance Claim Help
A policy owes you like kind and quality. A designated address in Elgin owes the Design Review Subcommittee a material it will approve.
Commercial and multi-family roofing across Elgin and the Fox Valley
Elgin lets an owner-occupant pull the permit and do the work on a single-family house. It does not extend that to anything else. Rental property, multi-family, commercial and industrial roofing in this city can only be performed by a contractor licensed in the State of Illinois, which means a landlord with a two-flat on Fulton Street has no self-help option. We carry that license and the bond behind it.
- ✓Low-slope membrane, modified bitumen and metal panel systems on commercial buildings
- ✓Two-flats, three-flats and brick worker's flats that cannot be owner-permitted here
- ✓The Elgin National Watch district covers commercial and industrial buildings under review
- ✓Roof drains, scuppers and overflow paths sized and checked before the membrane goes down
- ✓Rooftop curbs, condenser stands and vent penetrations flashed rather than sealed with mastic
- ✓Tear-off staged around tenant hours with the deck dried in every night
- ✓Silicone and acrylic restoration coatings where a sound membrane has life left in it
- ✓Written scopes that state the system, the thickness and the fastener pattern by name
Recent Projects Across northern Kane and McHenry counties
How It Works
- We look up the address first. Before anyone writes a number, we check the historic district and landmark map for your parcel and we count the existing layers at an eave or a rake. Those two answers decide whether you need a Certificate of Appropriateness, whether a re-cover is even legal on your roof, and what the tear-off and disposal will actually cost.
- A scope that names the material. The estimate states the shingle or panel by product and profile, the color, the underlayment, the flashing metal and a per-sheet allowance for bad decking. That is the same information Elgin wants on the permit application and the same information the Design Review Subcommittee wants on a certificate application, so nothing has to be invented later.
- Approvals, then materials, in that order. On a designated address the certificate is applied for first and the permit follows it. Only then do we order. The city is explicit that changes to approved work need fresh approval before materials are purchased, so ordering early is how a job ends up with the wrong shingle sitting on a driveway and nobody willing to sign for it.
- Tear-off, deck repair, final inspection. Elgin requires that repairs to decking, flashing and other roof components be finished before the new covering goes down, which is the opposite of laying felt over a soft sheet and hoping. We replace what is bad, flash the walls and penetrations in metal, then call the city for the final inspection the permit requires.
What Elgin Customers Say
They climbed up and counted the layers before quoting instead of guessing from the driveway. Two layers, so no re-cover, and they explained why the price was what it was. Nobody else bothered to look.
We had an old metal shingle roof and expected to be talked into ripping it off. Instead they resoldered the bad laps and repainted it. Cost a third of what two other bids wanted.
Straight answer on a hail inspection: the mat was fine everywhere they checked and there was no claim to file. They wrote it up anyway so we had it on paper. Refreshing.
Half-round gutters on a house with a molded cornice, and they explained why the standard profile would have covered the trim. Small thing, but it is the reason the front looks right.
Service Areas
Elgin Roof Pros serves Elgin, IL and surrounding communities including:
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Elgin require a permit for a re-roof?
Yes. Elgin takes re-roofing on a quick permit application with no plan review, and no work may begin before it is issued. The application wants the material described, the number of existing layers, the material cost and a notarized letter of intent from a contractor whose Illinois roofing license is already on file with the city. A final inspection closes it out.
How do I find out whether my house is in a historic district?
Elgin publishes a historic district and landmark map, and the city keeps five locally designated districts: the Elgin Historic District, Spring-Douglas, D.C. Cook-Lovell Area, the Elgin National Watch district and the Elgin Bungalow Thematic district. Individual landmarks exist outside those boundaries too. We check the parcel before quoting, because the answer changes the material list.
What is a Certificate of Appropriateness and what does it cost?
It is the written approval the Heritage Commission's Design Review Subcommittee issues for exterior work on a landmark or a district property, and the city charges nothing for it. It covers roofs, chimneys, gutters and anything else that changes how the outside looks. It is separate from the building permit, it is sometimes needed when no permit is, and it expires six months after approval.
Can I shingle over the roof I already have?
Only if there is one layer up there and it is sound. Elgin follows section R908 of the residential code, which requires removal down to the deck where the existing roofing is water soaked, where it has deteriorated past being a usable base, or where two or more applications of any covering are already on the house. Most older Elgin roofs fail at least one of those tests.
Will the city's rehabilitation grant pay for my new roof?
Usually not, and we would rather say so early. The Historic Architectural Rehabilitation Grant reimburses fifty or seventy-five percent up to twenty thousand dollars on residential district and landmark properties, but the city states plainly that it funds special restoration work and not compliance with basic property maintenance. A worn-out asphalt roof is maintenance. Restoring slate, tile or sawn cedar is a different conversation.
Can I pick any shingle color I like?
Outside the districts, yes. Inside them the guidelines name what is approvable: dark gray, black, brown or shades of dark red, with red or green also acceptable on Craftsman and Bungalow period houses. The popular weathered-wood and driftwood blends are not on that list. Homes predating the 1920s are also directed toward architectural shingles rather than 3-tab.