Roofs in Leicester
Leicester runs along the high ridge west of Worcester, with the town centre and Becker land on the crown, Cherry Valley dropping east toward the city and Rochdale south along Route 56 toward the Blackstone headwaters. A quarter of the stock, 25.7%, predates 1940, but only 6.4% of units are in two-to-four-unit buildings and 88.5% of occupied homes are owner-occupied, the highest ownership rate of the ten towns covered.
What wears a Leicester roof out
Farmhouses that grew a piece at a time
The nineteenth-century house here is rarely one shape. A main block picked up a rear ell, then a summer kitchen, then an enclosed porch, each with its own pitch and its own tie-in to what was there before. Replacing the roof means replacing four or five small roofs at four or five different pitches, joined at flashing that is as old as whichever addition came second.
Exposure on the ridge
Ground this high and this open takes wind that a house down in the valley never sees. Nor'easters cross the ridge without obstruction, and the mechanism that matters is uplift rather than impact: wind gets under a course at a rake or an eave and peels it back. Once a course has lifted, the water path runs under the covering rather than over it.
Snow that arrives earlier and leaves later
Elevation adds to the season at both ends. A roof on the ridge carries its first load before the city does and keeps its last one afterwards, which means more days under snow and more melt-and-refreeze events at the eave per winter. On a farmhouse with several shallow additions, each of those additions is collecting the load from the roof above it.
Ells and rear kitchens at low pitch
Additions on houses of this age were routinely built at a shallower pitch than the main block, sometimes below the pitch at which asphalt shingles are permitted at all. Where that is the case the section needs a membrane rather than shingles, which is a different material and a different trade detail, and it is one of the more common surprises on this housing stock.
Replacement or repair
- An asphalt covering past twenty years in this climate is at the end of its service, whatever it looks like from the pavement.
- Two applications already on the deck means Massachusetts requires removal rather than another layer.
- Damage spread across a meaningful part of a plane is different from one lifted course.
- The same leak returning after two patches is telling you the covering has stopped working.
- Soft spots underfoot, or daylight through the sheathing from the attic, put the deck into the conversation.
What the tear-off finds
The scope on an old Leicester house is written section by section rather than as one number. Each addition has its own pitch, its own deck and its own age, and the junctions between them are where the work actually is. A walk-through that names each section and says what happens to it is more useful here than a price per square.
The sequence does not vary from house to house, and it is set out in full on the roof replacement page.
Services available in Leicester
- Roof ReplacementFull tear-off to the deck, new underlayment and ice barrier, new covering.
- Storm Damage RoofingWind-lifted courses, ice dam damage and what a carrier expects to see documented.
- Three-Decker Roof ReplacementThe shallow hip roof on a Worcester three-decker, and why it is its own job.
- Roof Inspection ReportA written condition report for an insurer, a lender or a sale.
Areas covered in Leicester
Contractors cover Leicester and the surrounding area, including Leicester center, Cherry Valley, Rochdale, Greenville, Mannville, Burncoat Pond, Cedar Meadow, Main Street, Pleasant Street, Stafford Street, Henshaw Street and Paxton Street.
ZIP codes: 01524, 01542, 01611.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Will my insurance pay for a new roof?
- It turns on cause rather than condition. Carriers commonly cover sudden damage from an identifiable event, and commonly decline a covering that has simply reached the end of its service, however leaky it has become. Roof age has separately become a factor in whether a policy is renewed at all. Read what your own policy says about it before assuming either way.
- Part of my roof is too shallow for shingles. What goes there instead?
- A membrane. Below a pitch of two in twelve, asphalt shingles are not permitted and the section needs a continuous waterproof surface instead, which in this climate is normally a self-adhering modified bitumen or a single-ply membrane. It is a different material with a different service life, and it is worth having it costed as its own line rather than folded into a square-foot rate for the whole roof.
- Can the old roof stay on the main house if only the ell is failing?
- It can, and sometimes that is the right call, particularly where the ell is at a different pitch and effectively a separate roof already. The trade-off is that the two sections then age apart, the tie-in between them is new against old, and the colours will not match. Where the main roof is within a few years of its own end of service, doing both at once usually costs less than doing them separately.
- Does an old house need a different kind of ventilation?
- It needs ventilation designed for the roof it actually has, which on a house of this age is often several small attics and crawl spaces rather than one open one. A continuous ridge vent works where there is a continuous ridge and open soffits below it. Where the roof is broken into sections, each section needs its own intake and exhaust, and that is worked out while the covering is off.
- Why is Leicester's old housing so different from Worcester's old housing?
- Because the two towns were built for different reasons. Worcester's pre-1940 stock is largely three-deckers put up for factory workers close to the works, which is why a third of city units are still in two-to-four-unit buildings. Leicester's pre-1940 stock is farmhouses and village houses on land that was never subdivided that way, which is why only 6.4% of units here are in buildings of that size. Both towns have a quarter or more of their housing over eighty years old, but the roofs are a different shape, a different pitch and a different job.