Ask Each Roofer What They Do When They Find Another Crew's Shortcut

Most St. Louis roofs have been touched before. A house that is thirty or forty years old may carry two or three layers of shingles, a patch from a fall storm, a chimney flashing someone bent to fit, or a deck repair that was done in a hurry. When your roofer lifts the first course and finds that work, the decision about what happens next should already be on paper in each bid. This page covers what to ask each roofer before the tear-off starts, so that you are comparing answers instead of guessing on a Tuesday morning while the crew stands at the eave.

Why the old work matters to your bid

An earlier crew's shortcut is usually something small on its own. A nail set too high in a shingle course, a row of caulk where a step flashing should have been, a valley laid over a rotten board, or an exhaust vent cut through a bad deck section can each look minor under a tarp. Together they tell the new crew how much of the existing roof can be trusted to carry new material. A bid that prices only the replacement shingles and says nothing about the old work leaves you exposed to a change order in the middle of the job, when you have the least room to say no.

Freeze and thaw cycles make this worse in St. Louis. Water that gets under a poor repair in January expands, lifts the edge, and rots the sheathing below in ways that are not visible from the ground. Hail season adds another layer of wear, because a previous patch that looked fine last spring may have cracked along the nail line. A roofer who is honest about these risks will say so in the bid, and will show you photos of what they found.

Three answers to get in writing

When you sit down with each roofer, ask them to describe what they do the moment they find work they did not expect. Their answer should cover three things: who decides, how the decision is recorded, and what it costs.

• Who stops the crew and who makes the call on whether the fix is in scope, and whether that person is on the roof or on the phone.
• Whether they photograph the condition before anything is covered, with a date and a note of which slope and which spot.
• Whether the repair is priced as a unit rate already in the bid, a separate written change order, or a time and materials line that starts when the crew starts.

A roofer who answers with a general promise to "take care of it" has not answered the question. Write down the exact words. If a roofer says the repair is included, ask which line in the bid includes it and what size the allowance is. If the answer is that it depends on what is found, ask for the rate sheet now, before anyone is standing on the deck.

Ask about the deck before the shingles

The deck is where old shortcuts do the most damage and cost the most to fix. Ask each roofer how they check the sheathing for soft spots before the underlayment goes down. Some will probe from the attic side with a screwdriver. Others will walk the roof and mark suspect boards with chalk. Ask who marks them, how many boards they expect to replace on a roof of your size, and whether the replacement is priced by the sheet or by the piece. A partial sheet still costs a whole sheet, and that detail should appear in the bid, not on the final invoice.

Ask each roofer whether they will show you the soft spots before they are removed. A homeowner who can see a rotten board with a date and a photo is in a better position than one who receives a line item for "deck repair" with no picture attached.

What a written scope should say about prior work

A good scope names the old work it expects to find. It says whether the crew will remove prior layers, whether it will reuse any flashing, and what happens to a previous patch that is still sound. It also says what the crew will leave alone. If an old chimney flashing looks like it was installed by a different trade, the scope should say whether the new roofer will replace it or flag it for a separate contractor. Leaving that sentence out is how a disputed line shows up after the work is finished.

Missouri does not license roofers at the state level, and the permit desks in St. Louis County and the city differ on how much detail they want on a re-roof permit. That is one more reason to read the scope for what it says about existing conditions. A permit application will not capture a shortcut the crew found under the old shingles, so the written scope has to carry that information.

What to do with the answers

Put each roofer's answer in its own row next to the question. Mark the answers that name a person, a photo, and a number. Cross out the answers that say "we will see" or "it depends" without a rate or a rule. Two roofers may both say the work is included, but only one may say which line in the bid carries it and what happens when the decking is worse than expected. That is the one to compare on paper.

If a roofer says they have never found a shortcut on a St. Louis roof, ask to see a dated photo log from a recent tear-off where they did find one. A roofer who keeps those logs will have them. A roofer who does not keep them has told you something useful too.

If you want to see how Keys writes up existing conditions, call the office at (314) 220-2333 and ask for a sample scope from a finished job. Set that sample beside the written answers from the other roofers before you choose.