Roofing Company in Dover, DE

Roofing in Dover: Open Ground and Wind Off the Bay

Dover sits about 15 miles from the Delaware Bay, and once you get south of the C&D Canal the land flattens out into open farm country. That matters for a roof. We see more shingle lift and ridge cap damage in Kent County than we do up in New Castle County, where the terrain breaks up the wind, and homes on open lots take it hardest.

Wind doesn't tear a good roof off in one go. It lifts a tab a little, breaks the factory seal, and the next gust gets underneath. A few seasons of that and you've got bare spots and water finding its way to the decking. Isaias put an EF2 tornado down on the south side of Dover in August 2020 and ran it north past Smyrna, but that was the rare dramatic version; most roofs here go the slow way.

So we put GAF Timberline HDZ, rated to 130 mph, on most Dover jobs. It's usually a few hundred dollars more than a standard architectural shingle on a typical home, and on an open lot that isn't a hard decision. We hand-nail the exposed slopes to the six-nail wind pattern and run a sealed starter strip along every edge so the first course isn't left to flap.

Every job starts with a complete tear-off to the decking. No roofing over old shingles, ever.

And if your house went up between 2005 and 2015 with builder-grade three-tab shingles, have someone look at the roof now rather than after the next nor'easter. We check attic ventilation while we're up there, because a lot of the tract homes from that stretch were built without enough soffit-to-ridge airflow.

Cost, permits and timing in Dover

On a 1,500 to 2,500 square foot home in the Dover area, a standard replacement typically runs $8,500 to $18,000. A simple ranch with a walkable pitch lands near the low end, a two-story colonial with dormers and a few valleys near the high end. If we find bad decking during tear-off it's roughly $75 to $100 per sheet, and you approve it before we continue. There's no Delaware sales tax on the materials.

One Dover quirk: inside the city limits, building permits go through the City of Dover Planning and Inspections office rather than Kent County, and the city keeps its own contractor registration. A straight shingle-for-shingle job on sound decking doesn't always need a permit; replacing sheathing or switching to a different roofing material does. We're registered with the city, we check which case your job is, and we handle the paperwork either way. Most Dover homes are done in one day.