Royal Dane Roofing · Salt Lake City, UT · From the roof

The Warranty Is Only as Good as Whoever Answers the Phone in Three Years

A roof is one of the few things you buy where the value of the purchase depends on a company still existing years later. If a flashing detail turns out to be wrong, you find out in the third winter, not the first week. So the real question when you are choosing a roofer is not only whether they can do the work. It is whether the same people will pick up when you call about it in 2029.

I say that as somebody with an obvious interest in the answer. I have been on roofs for about ten years and I have run my own shop for three of them, which makes me a small company, and small is the whole argument here. Not the biggest crew in Salt Lake County, which is exactly why your roof does not get treated like number forty of the week.

What follows is what I would actually check if I were hiring someone else, minus the parts of this conversation that usually get filled with vague reassurance.

The Question Under Every Other Question

Roofing has a lot of turnover as a trade. Companies open, run for a few seasons, and close, and after a big weather event the valley fills with outfits that were not here the year before and will not be here the year after. That is not a moral failing on anybody’s part. It is just the shape of the industry, and it has a direct consequence for you: a warranty from a company that no longer exists is not a warranty.

So when somebody hands you paperwork, the useful follow-up is about continuity rather than terms. How long have you operated under this name? Do you have a local address I could find? Are you the person I will call if there is a problem, or will I be calling a number that routes somewhere else?

None of those questions are hostile and any decent company will answer them without getting defensive. The reaction to being asked is itself informative.

I will also say plainly what I cannot tell you. I am not going to write a paragraph here about what licensing or insurance a contractor is required to carry in Utah, because requirements vary and I am a roofer rather than the right source for that. What I will say is that you are entitled to ask any contractor for proof of what they carry, and to verify it independently rather than taking a photograph of a certificate as the end of the matter.

Who Is Actually Going to Be on Your Roof

This is the question I would ask first, because the answer varies enormously and almost nobody asks it.

In a lot of arrangements, the person who comes to your house and gives you a number is a salesperson, and the work is carried out by a crew they have never met, subcontracted through a broker. That can produce fine results. It can also mean nobody involved on the day has any relationship with the promises made in your driveway, and that when a detail is done wrong there is no one who both saw the quote and swung the hammer.

How we do it is not complicated. Jeremy handles the assessment himself, on the roof with a camera, and Jeremy is on the job. That is not a competitive claim so much as a description of a small operation. There is no layer between the person who told you what the roof needs and the person making sure it happens.

So ask. Will the person quoting be present during the work? Is the crew employed by the company or subcontracted? If subcontracted, who is responsible when something needs correcting? Those are ordinary questions and the answers tell you what you are actually buying.

What a Real Scope Looks Like on Paper

A number on its own tells you very little, because two companies can quote the same house for very different work. What you want is enough detail that you could compare two documents and see where they differ.

The things I would want named: whether it is a tear-off or an overlay, what underlayment is going down, whether ice and water shield is included and where, whether flashings are being replaced or reused, what happens to the vents and pipe boots, and which shingle product line is going on. We install IKO architectural shingles, and naming the product is part of the paperwork rather than a detail you discover later.

The one that catches people out is decking. On an older house nobody knows what is under there until the old roof comes off, so a quote should say what happens if boards are bad. Is replacement included up to some amount, is it charged separately, and how will it be documented? A quote that is silent on decking is a quote with an open-ended item in it.

Cleanup belongs in writing too. Magnet sweep through the lawn, gutters cleared, haul-off scheduled. That sounds minor until you are picking nails out of your grass in June.

Signals That Have Nothing to Do With Roofing

Some of the most reliable signals show up before anybody gets on a ladder.

Pressure to decide immediately is the big one. A roof is rarely so urgent that you cannot think overnight, and a discount that expires when the person leaves your driveway is a sales technique rather than a price. If something genuinely is urgent, a straight roofer will explain the specific risk and still let you call somebody else.

Then there is the willingness to tell you no. A good share of the calls we take end with a repair recommendation instead of a replacement pitch. That is not a marketing line, it is just what happens when you look at roofs honestly, and any company that never recommends the smaller option is telling you something about how it makes decisions.

Documentation is the third. Photographs of what was found, before anything is touched. If somebody cannot show you the problem, you are being asked to take their word for a large purchase, and you should not have to.

If you want to see the standard rather than read about it, the gallery is all our own work, and how we operate in this part of the valley is on the South Salt Lake page. Whether the honest answer for your house turns out to be a repair or a full replacement, you will hear it with photographs attached. Send us a note whenever you want a look.

Quick Answers

What should I ask a roofer about insurance and licensing?

Ask what they carry and ask for documentation, then verify it with the issuer rather than accepting a photo of a certificate. I am deliberately not going to summarize requirements here, because that is not something you should take from a roofing company’s blog. Ask directly, get it in writing, and check it yourself.

Is a bigger company safer because they are more likely to still exist?

Not reliably. Size and longevity are different things, and plenty of large operations in this trade are newer than they look while smaller established ones have been in the same place for years. The useful question is how long they have operated under that name locally, not how many trucks they have.

How many quotes should I get?

Two or three is usually enough to see the range and spot an outlier. What matters more than the count is that you can compare them meaningfully, which means each one has to describe the actual scope. Three numbers with no detail behind them tell you almost nothing about which is the better buy.

Somebody knocked on my door after a storm. Should I let them look?

You are never obliged to, and I would be cautious about anybody getting on your roof unsupervised on the day they introduce themselves. If you want it checked, that is reasonable, but call a company you chose rather than one that chose you, and never sign anything in a driveway conversation.

What makes a workmanship warranty worth having?

Two things. That it is written down with its length and coverage stated plainly, and that the company issuing it is one you can still reach later. The second is the part people underweight, because a generous warranty from an outfit that has closed is not a document you can do anything with.