Reviving a Church with 3 Layers of Roofing!

St. Andrew’s Church in Colchester was having leaks in their metal roofing and was tired of the continuous roof maintenance. They were searching for roofing companies and roofing contractors when they saw us doing some residential roofing work in their area! They decided to get a free estimate from us, and after our roof inspection and our presentation of how our roofing systems work, they had us tear off their old roofing materials and replace their roof!

This roof installation was no ordinary project, so we brought our sales manager and lead service tech in to help assess the roof. Klaus and our general manager even stopped by the site! Unfortunately, the Churchs' most recent roof covering was aluminum, so we had to take a core sample of the whole roof to determine what other roofing products were under their metal roof. They had a total of three layers from constant re-roofing; no wonder they had roof leaks! Unfortunately, this roof was beyond repairing, and the Church was done with metal roofs and wanted to have an asphalt shingle roof instead.

This was a big job from the start, with an area just shy of an Olympic-sized swimming pool at 10,000 square feet and monstrous vents mounted to the roof. Even with our experience in shingle roofing and larger jobs, this project was not straightforward. The nails used previously were heftier than we've seen in a while, so the crew spent more time stripping the roofing material and underlayment. Unfortunately, after all that work, they found that the roof deck presented them with an entirely new problem.

The decking was made out of interwoven fibers with thick concrete strips, common in commercial roofing. As a result, we couldn't use our ordinary roofing nails; we had to use special-ordered screws over 2 inches thick and use fasteners as well! In our Klaus Larsen Roofing Systems, we usually use nails that are less than an inch thick!

To top it all off, on the first day of work, our dumpsters were on the far side of the parking lot, so they had to load up the materials in the truck and drive it over to the dumpster! There were a total of approximately eight dumpsters full once we were finished. We also used 300 sheets of plywood to cover up their faulty Yankee Gutters.
Despite all the twists and turns and the complexity and stature of this job, we transformed their aluminum roof into an asphalt roofing masterpiece! With our workmanship guarantee and superior roofing system, we know their new roof will serve them for years to come.