When a homeowner plans to have a new roof installed on the family’s home, that same homeowner’s first step entails obtaining an estimate. What factors do contractors consider, when arriving at that estimate?
The obvious considerations
The roof’s size: The size determines the amount of material that the contractor needs to order. In addition, it has a major influence on the number of hours of labor that must go into completion of the planned project.
The quality of the materials: Top-rated materials cost more than those that can be secured at a low price.
Additional considerations
The scope of the planned project: Some homeowners hire a contractor in order to get professional help with replacement of a single shingle. Others seek assistance with performance of repairs to flashing, a roof’s underlayment, or some other roofing component.
Labor costs: The price of a given project tends to reflect the presence or absence of specific labor practices in the area where that particular project needs to be competed.
It could be that labor unions have forced an increase in the size of the workers’ wages, or a decrease in the cost of the workers’ health insurance. By the same token, it could be that the labor unions have demanded an increase in the amount of sick time and/or vacation pay that is given to each worker.
In some regions, the local government has issued rules that relate to the safety level in each job site. The existence of those same rules tends to push up the cost of any roofing project in that same “super-safe” area.
Features found on the homeowner’s roof: Some contractors get asked to complete a simple job, such as replacing a few broken or missing tiles. Others need to tackle a more challenging task, such as putting a membrane on a flat roof. Sometimes, too, a task’s level of complexity multiplies as the number of features increase on the rooftop where the contractor’s team needs to work.
What sort of features could cause a roofing contractor to provide a possible client with a higher estimate? Those would be things like skylights and solar tubes. Each such feature has the ability to increase the number of peaks and valleys on a given rooftop. Yet there are times when a roof that does not have any such feature could prove expensive to repair or replace. That would certainly be the case in a home with a roof that featured a minimal pitch.
In that case, the Roofing Contractor in San Jose would need to charge more, in order to compensate for the likely introduction of measures such as introduction of rubber shingles. Such measures have the ability to reduce the chances for seepage.