Why Deer Park Roofs Age Differently

Ask a roofer in Dallas what ends a roof and the answer is usually hail. Ask the same question in Deer Park and you get a different answer, even though the shingles on both houses came off the same truck.

Both places are hard on roofs. They are hard on them in different ways, and the difference decides what your options are.

What wears out a Dallas roof?

Mostly, things hitting it. North Texas sits in one of the most hail-prone parts of the country, and a bad hailstorm can bruise and split a roof that is only a few years old. Add colder winters, with real freezes, and shingles there go through bigger swings between hot and cold.

To be fair to Dallas, a lot of roofs there come off sooner than ours do. They just come off for a different reason: damage.

What wears out a Deer Park roof?

Mostly, the sun. A roof here gets a long, hot season every year, and a dark shingle in July sun runs far hotter than the air around it.

An asphalt shingle is held together by oils. Heat and UV drive those oils out, slowly, every summer. Nothing has to hit the roof for that to happen. A shingle that has lost its oils goes stiff, and a stiff shingle cracks at the edges when the roof deck moves, curls at the corners, and stops holding its granules. Those granules end up in your gutters.

So a typical Deer Park roof does not wear through first. It dries out first.

What about the humidity and the salt?

They matter, just not to the shingle's oils.

Salt air is hard on metal. Flashing, fasteners, vents and drip edge corrode faster near the water than they do inland. Those are worth checking on any coastal roof, and they are a roofer's job.

Humidity feeds algae. The black streaks you see on so many roofs around here are usually algae, not rot or damage. It looks bad, and it is mostly cosmetic.

Neither one is the main reason shingles here go stiff. That is the heat.

And the storms?

The Gulf Coast gets its share. A tropical storm or a hurricane can lift and tear shingles, and the occasional hailstorm does reach us. When that happens, the roof is damaged, not dried out, and it needs a roofer. Nothing sprayed on a roof fixes storm damage, and we will tell you so.

Why the difference matters for your roof

A roof that has been hit needs repair or replacement. There is no way around that, in Dallas or here.

A roof that has dried out is a different problem. If the shingles are still intact, the oils can be put back. A rejuvenation treatment soaks into the shingles and restores the flexibility the sun took, and the roof stays on the house.

The catch is timing. The treatment only works while the shingle still has enough body to respond. Wait until it is cracking through or leaking, and replacement is the only option left.

You cannot tell which kind of roof you have from the driveway. That is what the free assessment is for. We work out of Deer Park and cover La Porte, Pasadena, Baytown and the towns between them. We photograph your shingles, show you the pictures, and tell you straight whether your roof is a candidate, including when it is not.