Pittsburgh Premium Roofing: Replacement, Repair, Flashing and Downspout Work
Expert residential and commercial roofing services across Allegheny County, with the water route settled before the covering is chosen.
- ✓Permits pulled through the city before we open a roof
- ✓Written estimate showing where each downspout discharges
- ✓Dated photographs of the deck before it is covered
- ✓Registered contractor, insured, workers compensation in force
Pittsburgh Premium Roofing covers the whole list for homes and businesses in this city: replacement roofs, leak repair, storm restoration, flashing, and gutter and downspout work. We install SBS-modified laminated shingles, standing seam and mechanically fastened metal, clay and concrete tile, and mechanically attached TPO, EPDM or modified bitumen wherever a deck runs low-slope. Every job is quoted in writing, permitted through the city, and photographed from tear-off to cleanup.
The variable that separates this city from every other roofing market is the destination of the runoff. This city is built on hillsides cut into weak red claystone, and the U.S. Geological Survey has named inadequate disposal of downspout water as one of the ways those slopes get destabilized. So the leader route and the discharge point are settled on our estimate before anyone talks about color, profile or price.
In practice that means a full tear-off to the boards, plywood keyed into sound plank decking, self-adhered membrane at eaves and valleys and penetrations, open metal valleys with a raised center rib, ring-shank fasteners at the pattern the exposure calls for, and intake and exhaust balanced as measured numbers rather than adjectives. It also means a drawing showing where every downspout lands, in feet, that you keep.
Why Pittsburgh Chooses Pittsburgh Premium Roofing
- ✓We inspect the ground as well as the roof, using the warning signs the U.S. Geological Survey published for homeowners in this county.
- ✓Every estimate carries a drawing showing each leader, its size, its route, and the distance in feet from the wall to its discharge.
- ✓We say no in writing. Tile on unverified footings, standing seam on a moving frame, and coatings over cracking decks are all jobs we decline.
- ✓We name what we cannot do. The stormwater dye test and the evidence of compliance are a registered plumber's work, not a roofer's.
- ✓Ventilation is calculated and written on the estimate as net free area in and out, because a boxed cornice eave defeats ridge vent alone.
- ✓Storm and claim documentation is deliberately plain, so an adjuster reads a credible file instead of discounting an inflated one on sight.
About Pittsburgh Premium Roofing in Pittsburgh, PA
Pittsburgh Premium Roofing works the hill towns and river terraces of Allegheny County, which is a more specific job than it sounds. A crew that learned roofing on flat ground reads this city wrong: it treats the gutter as trim, the downspout as an afterthought, and the ground as somebody else's department. Here those three things decide whether the roof above them lasts.
So we built the company around one habit. We read the property before we read the roof, and everything we recommend is written down with photographs attached. That habit costs us jobs, because the honest answer is sometimes that you should hire a geotechnical engineer instead of us, or that a small repair buys two more winters and you should not spend more than that.
The rest is ordinary competence done consistently. Permits pulled before the roof is opened. Full tear-off to the boards. Decking replaced where it no longer holds a fastener. Flashing woven, not smeared. Ventilation calculated as net free area in and out. Cleanup with a magnet sweep. Warranties registered in your name. A drawing showing where every gallon of your roof's water ends up.
Our Roofing Services in Pittsburgh, PA
Roof Replacement
Pittsburgh Premium Roofing replaces roofs on ground that does not always hold still. Before anyone prices squares, we measure the deck diagonals and look at what the house is standing on, because a hillside lot can rack a frame slowly enough that nobody notices.
Roof Leak Repair
A leak is a symptom and we treat it that way. Water enters at one point, travels a rafter, and shows up on a ceiling somewhere else entirely, so the first thing we do is stop guessing and start reading the path backward from the stain.
Storm Damage Restoration
Storms in this region rarely fail a roof by force alone. They fail it by volume.
Hail Damage Roofing
We will start with the thing that costs us work. Western Pennsylvania is not a hail market.
Wind Damage Roofing
Wind does not treat this city evenly, and the reason is the topography. A house on a plateau ridgetop and a house in the hollow six hundred feet below it can be a four minute drive apart and live in different wind climates for their entire service lives.
Roof Inspections
Our inspection covers more ground than a roof inspection normally does, and there is a reason for it. On a hillside property the roof and the ground are one system, and looking at only the top half tells you half of what you paid to know.
Asphalt Shingle Roofs
Asphalt sits on most of this city's roofs and it serves well, on one condition: the plane underneath has to be genuinely flat and genuinely square. In older housing here neither is safe to assume, and assuming is how a new roof ends up looking wrong from the sidewalk.
Metal Roofing
Metal is a fine roof and a demanding one. A standing seam assembly is engineered to move along its own length as temperature changes, on concealed clips that let it slide.
Tile Roofing
Tile is uncommon in Pittsburgh and the reason is worth knowing first. Tile is heavy.
Flat & Low-Slope Roofing
Low-slope decks are everywhere in Pittsburgh housing: back additions, porch roofs, rowhouse rears, the flat over a kitchen bump-out. They are also where the city's drainage rules and its slope problem meet, which makes the drainage decision the real decision on this page.
Roof Coatings & Sealing
A coating buys time on a roof that is otherwise sound. It is not a repair, it is not a replacement, and the moment it gets used as either it becomes the most expensive product on this list, because it hides the evidence you needed to make a better decision.
Roof Ventilation
Ventilation is the least glamorous line on an estimate and the one most likely to decide whether the roof above it reaches its rated life. In older Pittsburgh housing it is also the hardest to get right, because the eaves were built before anyone thought a roof needed to breathe.
Skylights
A skylight puts an opening in the single element of a building that exists specifically in order to be unbroken. Done properly it will outlast the roof around it.
Gutters & Downspouts
Of everything on this website, this page carries the most weight, and it is the one the trade usually treats as an accessory sale. On a Pittsburgh hillside the gutter is not the product.
Fascia & Soffit
Fascia and soffit are the places where a roof takes its weather from the side, and in this city they are also where a drainage mistake writes its confession. By the time a fascia board is soft, something upstream has been wrong for several seasons and nobody was reading it.
Chimney Flashing
Chimneys leak more than any other detail on a Pittsburgh roof, and the reason is structural rather than cosmetic. A masonry chimney is a heavy independent column, and in older housing it very often carries its own footing separate from the framing around it.
Emergency Tarping
Emergency work has a single goal, which is no more water into the building tonight. It also carries a rule peculiar to this city.
Commercial Roofing
Commercial roofs in this region are bigger collection surfaces on more constrained sites, and on a hillside parcel that combination turns roof drainage into a site engineering question long before it becomes a roofing question. It is a site problem wearing a roofing invoice.
Insurance Claim Help
We help with claims by documenting what we find, in a form an adjuster can work from. Adjusting claims for a fee is somebody else's licensed occupation, settlement talks are not ours to have, and the deductible that quietly disappears is somebody else's problem waiting to become yours.
Commercial roofing for hillside sites across Allegheny County
Commercial buildings here shed enormous volume through a small number of outlets onto parcels that are frequently benched, walled or cut into a slope. We start a commercial job by locating every drain, scupper, conductor and leader and tracing where each one actually discharges today, which on older buildings rarely matches the drawings. Then we scope the membrane. Owners, property managers and tenants get a roof plan, a maintenance interval and a record they can hand to the next person.
- ✓Mechanically attached TPO over tapered polyisocyanurate on low-slope envelopes
- ✓EPDM and granulated modified bitumen where the detailing suits them better
- ✓Structural standing seam metal on warehouse, church and institutional roofs
- ✓Roof drain, scupper and conductor tracing before any membrane is specified
- ✓Phased sections so tenants keep trading through the work
- ✓Night and weekend windows where daytime noise is a problem
- ✓Daily cleanup with magnet sweeps across every tenant parking area
- ✓Roof plans with drain locations and a written maintenance interval
Recent Projects Across Allegheny County
How It Works
- We walk the lot, not just the roof. Before the ladder comes off the truck we walk the perimeter. Yard walls, fence lines, gas meter piping, utility poles, retaining walls, seeps, and the ground under every downspout. On a hillside property those tell us things the roof cannot, and they occasionally change our recommendation completely.
- We put the discharge on paper. You get a drawing with the estimate showing each leader, its size, its route and where it finally lets go, dimensioned in feet from the wall. If the honest answer is that the water needs to travel thirty feet to reach somewhere safe and lawful, the drawing says thirty feet.
- We permit, then we open the roof. Pennsylvania treats a residential reroof as permitted work and treats relocating a drain leader as more than an ordinary repair. We file with Permits, Licenses and Inspections, wait for issuance, and only then strip. No roof of ours gets opened on a maybe.
- We hand over the record, not just an invoice. At closeout you receive dated photographs of the deck before it was covered, a written scope naming every part replaced, manufacturer warranties registered in your name, the discharge drawing, and our workmanship warranty. Keep the drawing. It is the document that matters in five years.
What Pittsburgh Customers Say
They found the leak was coming from a chimney reglet that two other crews had just kept sealing over. Cut a proper joint, wedged the counterflashing, done. First quiet winter in four years.
I called for a roof and got told to call an engineer first because my fence line was bowed. That was not what I wanted to hear. It was, unfortunately, exactly right.
Full tear-off on a 1912 house, and they replaced a lot more decking than the first quote I had assumed. Photographs of everything, no argument about the change, gutters routed properly out back.
After the sewer disconnection my downspout was just spitting onto the bank. They ran a solid line out to the street side and drew it on the invoice. Bank has stayed put since.
Service Areas
Pittsburgh Premium Roofing serves Pittsburgh, PA and surrounding communities including:
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I actually need a permit to replace a roof in Pittsburgh?
Yes. Pennsylvania's construction code requires an owner or agent altering or repairing a residential building to apply to the building code official first, and in Pittsburgh that office is Permits, Licenses and Inspections. The same rule expressly says that adding or relocating a drain leader is not an ordinary repair, so downspout re-routing is permitted work too. Any contractor telling you a reroof here needs no paperwork is telling you something you can check.
My downspouts run into the sewer. Is that a problem?
In the city, yes. Pittsburgh's ordinance on illegal surface stormwater connections makes it unlawful to keep downspout or roof drainage tied into the sanitary sewer, including connections that were legal when they were made, and it also makes it unlawful to sell a property without evidence of compliance from the water and sewer authority. That evidence rests on a dye test certified by a plumber registered with the county health department. We are roofers and cannot issue it.
Why do you look at my fence line during a roof inspection?
Because the U.S. Geological Survey published a list of things a homeowner in this county should look for on a slope, and a bowed fence line is on it. So are cracked yard walls, sash windows that jam, gas meter piping no longer level, tilted poles, uneven wire sag, hummocky ground and seeps. One of them means little. Four of them together means the ground is moving, and a roof estimate is the wrong document to be reading.
Is this the same as the expansive soil problem out west?
No, and the difference decides what you should spend money on. Expansive clay changes volume, swelling wet and shrinking dry, so it lifts and drops a footing vertically and does it again every year. The remedy there is keeping moisture even all the way around the house.
Our red claystone loses strength when it wets and then moves downhill on a slip surface. It is lateral, one directional, and it does not reverse. The remedy is getting water off the slope entirely.
Will homeowners insurance cover damage from ground movement?
Almost never. Standard policies exclude earth movement, which covers landslide, slump, creep, settling and subsidence. We say it plainly because the alternative is a contractor writing your slope problem up as wind damage, watching the claim fail at inspection, and leaving you holding a document you signed. Wind, hail and impact damage to the covering are a different matter and we document those carefully. We just will not relabel one as the other.
How old is the housing you usually work on here?
Old. The Census Bureau's year-built table for the city puts more than seventy-eight thousand of roughly one hundred sixty-eight thousand housing units at 1939 or earlier, so nearly half of Pittsburgh's stock predates the Second World War. Practically, that means rough-sawn framing, one-by plank sheathing laid with gaps, boxed cornice eaves with no soffit cavity, and masonry chimneys on their own footings. We price for finding those, not for hoping otherwise.