Roofing in Port Aransas

Direct exposure

Mustang Island has no upwind neighbors. Wind off the Gulf reaches a roof here at full strength, and it brings water with it that is not fresh. That combination is the whole story of an island roof, and it is why materials that last comfortably in San Antonio behave differently a hundred and fifty miles away.

The height makes it worse. A lot of building here is raised, either on piers or with living space above a garage, which puts the roof plane further up into faster moving air than a slab house of the same size on the mainland. Uplift pressure rises with height and with exposure, and an island roof gets both.

Salt is a daily load

People picture salt damage as something that happens in a hurricane. It is not. Airborne salt settles on every surface on this island continuously, and because it is hygroscopic it pulls moisture out of humid air and holds it against whatever it is sitting on. Metal under a permanent damp salt film corrodes on a schedule that has nothing to do with rainfall.

The parts that go first are small: ring shank nails through a ridge cap, the collar on a plumbing vent, the crimped edge on drip metal, the screws in a turbine base. None of them is expensive. All of them are inside the roof, which means replacing one costs a great deal more than specifying a better one on the day the roof went on.

That is the single most useful decision on an island job. When the quote is being written, ask what the exposed metal is and what the alternative costs. The answer is usually a small number against the total, and it decides whether you are back up there in eight years or eighteen.

Sand, and what it does to a surface

Wind here carries sand as well as salt. On a shingle roof that shows as granule loss on the windward planes at a rate that would look like storm damage anywhere inland, and it is worth being clear headed about it, because a normally weathered island roof and a hail damaged inland roof can photograph similarly. An adjuster who works this coast knows the difference. It is a reason to have somebody who works the island look at it rather than somebody who drove down for the week.

Scheduling round the calendar

Almost everything here turns over as short term rental at some point in the year, and that governs when work can actually happen far more than weather does. Good island contractors book months out and work to the gaps. If somebody can start tomorrow in the middle of the season, it is fair to ask why they are free.

The mainland rules all still apply out here, including the three day right to cancel and the deductible law, and the windstorm certificate on a replacement is no different on the island than it is in town, which is covered on the replacement page.