Compare How Each Roofer Handles Your Garage Door on Roof Day

On most St. Louis houses the garage roof and the main roof meet at one point above the driveway, and the garage door is the part of the job you use every morning. A roof bid will talk about shingles, underlayment and flashing, but it often says nothing about the door that opens onto the work area. Before you pick a roofer, ask each one how the garage door, its opener and its safety sensors will be handled on roof day. The answers are short, and they are easy to compare side by side.

Who opens and closes the door

A tear-off puts debris, nails and sometimes a few shingles on the driveway and the apron in front of the garage. The crew needs to move bundles in and out, and many crews prefer to stage material inside the garage, where it stays dry and out of the way. That means someone has to run the door. Ask each roofer whether their crew will operate the door, whether they expect you to leave the remote or keypad code, or whether they want the door left open for the day. Each choice has a cost. A door left open during a St. Louis afternoon shower lets rain blow across the garage floor. A door left closed means the crew must stage material on the driveway or in the yard.

Write down the answer. "We will handle the door" is not the same as "our foreman opens the door at 7:00 each morning, closes it at 5:00 each evening, and tells you before it is left open overnight." The second version gives you something to check when you get home.

The opener and its power

Most residential openers plug into a garage outlet, and some are wired to a dedicated circuit. A crew running a compressor, a hoist or a saw may draw on the same circuit as the opener, and a tripped breaker can leave the door stuck halfway. Ask whether the crew will use the garage outlets at all, and whether they plan to run a cord from the garage to the roof. If they do, the cord should not cross the door track or lie where the door will close on it.

Ask also about the manual release cord. If the power goes out during the day, or the opener fails, someone in the house needs to know how to pull the release and lift the door by hand. Some roofers tie the release cord up while the crew is working, and that is reasonable, but it should be tied in a way you can undo quickly. The release cord should not become the place where a bundle strap or a rope gets hung.

Sensors, the floor and the track

The safety sensors near the floor are the part of the opener most likely to fail on a roof job. Dust, granules, a dropped tool or a bumped bracket can knock them out of line, and then the door will not close until someone cleans and realigns them. Ask the roofer to tell you if the sensors stop working during the job, and ask who will check them before the crew leaves each day.

The track and springs are not usually touched during a roof replacement, but a ladder set against the garage eave, or a dumpster rolled too close to the door, can bend a track section. Check the track before the crew leaves on the last day. A short walk-around with a phone camera, showing the door closed and the track on both sides, gives you a dated record if anyone later asks what the door looked like before the work started.

Ladders and staging at the garage eave

Where the garage roof meets the house, the crew will set ladders and sometimes a staging frame. On a St. Louis lot with a narrow side yard and a driveway that runs close to the garage wall, the ladder line often ends up in front of the door. Ask each roofer where the ladders will sit and whether the door opening will stay clear of them. A useful answer names a specific spot, such as "the ladder goes on the lawn side of the garage, and the door stays clear at all times." A vague answer such as "we will work around it" means you will be the one moving the ladder each morning.

Ask also how the crew will reach the garage roof on the first day, and whether a fall protection line will be tied off to the garage gable. Those anchor points should not be fastened to the door track, the header or the opener bracket. A roofer who has planned the job will be able to say where the anchors go.

What to ask each roofer

• Will your crew operate the garage door, or will you leave the remote or keypad code with us?
• Will the door stay closed, open or on a set schedule during the work, and who decides?
• Will the crew plug anything into the garage outlets, and where will the power cords run?
• Who checks the safety sensors each day, and who tells me if they stop working?
• Where will the ladders and any staging sit relative to the door opening?
• Will the door, track or opener be touched in any way, and if so, what gets checked before the crew leaves?
• Who do I call if the door will not close at the end of a work day?

Put the answers in the written scope or in the email that confirms the start date. A roofer who says the door is not their concern is telling you how the rest of the day is likely to run.

Before the start date

About two weeks before the start date, walk the garage with a phone. Photograph the door in the closed position, the track on both sides, the sensors near the floor and the opener itself. If the door has been slow or noisy, note that too. Send the set to the roofer with the date visible in the file. If the crew later says the door was already noisy, you have a record that predates their arrival.

Clear the garage floor of anything you do not want exposed to dust or foot traffic, and move your car out of the way on the first morning so the crew can stage bundles without asking you. If the door will be running on a schedule, tell everyone in the house that the opener may sound different while the crew is working, and that anyone who sees the door move should keep clear of the track.