Scranton Roof Pros: Roof Replacement, Leak Repair and Storm Work Across Lackawanna County
Expert residential and commercial roofing services. Every free inspection opens with your address run against the state mine map, in writing, before there is any price attached.
- ✓Licensed by the City of Scranton under Chapter 203, with the class named on the permit application so you can check it
- ✓Every report opens with the DEP mine viewer result for your address and the map sheet reference, dated
- ✓We tell people to buy the Commonwealth's subsidence policy before they buy anything at all from us
- ✓No door-knocking after storms, no contingency signature at the kitchen table, and no help with a deductible
Why Scranton Chooses Scranton Roof Pros
- ✓We look your address up on the department's mine viewer before we quote, because in this valley the answer changes whether a roof is the right thing to buy this month at all.
- ✓Pennsylvania sells subsidence cover separately instead of writing it into your policy the way the statute does in Illinois, so here the first question is whether any coverage exists, not which of two perils to file under.
- ✓On a house with a mapped void and no policy we will hand you the department's phone number and leave without a signed contract, because forty-one dollars a year outranks anything on our price list.
- ✓We refuse to coat over a split detail. Beyond hiding evidence, unrepaired damage can block the Commonwealth from issuing a policy at all until the repairs are made as its board directs.
- ✓On a double block we quote in two columns split at the deed line, so two owners of one continuous roof plane can see exactly which feet of it each of them is buying.
- ✓We say plainly that we read maps and roofs, not ground. The department warns its own records may be incomplete, so if a building is moving the next call is a structural engineer, not another roofer.
How It Works
The Address Goes In Before the Ladder Goes Up
Every job starts at a desk. We run the property through the DEP mine subsidence viewer, note whether it returns as a known underground mining area or only as ground where coal is thought to exist, and pull the mine map sheet covering it. That result goes at the top of your report, dated.
Coverage Status, Then Condition
We ask whether a Commonwealth subsidence policy is in force and what amount it is written at. That answer changes our advice more than the shingle condition does, because a building with no policy and a mapped void beneath it has a gap that new shingles cannot close, and the fix costs less than a service call.
A Scope You Can Read Line by Line
Tear-off, board sheathing repair per square foot, plywood overlay if the sheathing has shrunk past holding a fastener, ice barrier, underlayment, valley metal, wall flashings, intake and exhaust, disposal. Separate lines, separate numbers, and the ones we would skip on our own house marked as optional.
Install, Photograph, Hand Over the File
We work in whole courses, protect the ground and the neighbor's half on an attached building, and sweep with a magnet rather than a promise. You finish holding product labels, pictures of everything the covering now hides, the ventilation arithmetic, the permit closeout and the warranty on paper.
Our Roofing Services in Scranton, PA
Roof Replacement
A Scranton tear-off has a step in front of it that roofers in most places never have to think about. Whether the Commonwealth insures this building against the ground under it, and whether it already does, changes what we recommend and the order we recommend it in.
Roof Leak Repair
Most leaks in Scranton housing are detail failures at a penetration or a wall line, and they are cheap. A small number are not, and on a double block a small number of those are not even entering through your half of the building.
Storm Damage Restoration
Storms here are real and so is the damage, and most of it is straightforward. What is different in this valley is what happens when the damage turns out not to be weather, because in Pennsylvania that discovery usually means there is no claim to file at all.
Hail Damage Roofing
Expect an argument on this page. Northeastern Pennsylvania takes hail, but far less of the severe roof-wrecking sort than the plains do, and much of what gets reported here as ice damage turns out on inspection to be something else entirely.
Wind Damage Roofing
Wind takes a roof apart from the outside in. Everything in the field is held down by the courses stacked on top of it, while the rake, the eave and the ridge have nothing above them.
Roof Inspections
An inspection here begins at a desk rather than on a ladder. Before anyone opens a van door we run the property through the department's mine subsidence viewer, because what it returns changes how the rest of the visit is spent and what the report is worth afterwards.
Asphalt Shingle Roofs
On a Scranton house the interesting part of an asphalt job is not the shingle. It is the square-edge board sheathing underneath it, laid a century ago with gaps between the boards, and whether that timber will still hold a fastener after a hundred years of drying out.
Metal Roofing
Metal is a good roof and we install a lot of it. The argument worth having in this county is not about the panel, though.
Tile Roofing
Most tile conversations in Scranton are really slate conversations, and separating the two saves people a great deal of money. Somebody looks at a heavy patterned roof on a period house, calls it tile, and asks us to price tile.
Flat & Low-Slope Roofing
The most common low-slope roof in this city is a full-width front porch, and on an attached house it usually runs unbroken across two households. One plane, one membrane, two deeds.
Roof Coatings & Sealing
Coatings have one honest application and a great many dishonest ones. The honest one is buying more service life out of a low-slope membrane that is watertight and sits on sound structure.
Roof Ventilation
No line on a roofing estimate returns more per dollar than the vents, and none is botched more often. The job runs across two seasons here: moving heat out of a dark attic in August, and holding sheathing cold enough in February that meltwater does not refreeze.
Skylights
Skylights are not the problem people think. Old skylights are.
Gutters & Downspouts
Nobody thinks about gutters until they fail, and over old workings they deserve more attention than that. They are one of very few parts of a building an owner controls that change what the soil beside the footing does, and they sit oddly in the state's insurance.
Fascia & Soffit
The eave is where the roof hands off to the wall, and in Scranton's older neighborhoods it is usually not a modern eave at all. A boxed cornice built from dimensional lumber and moldings, closed underneath, with no vented soffit panel in it and no intention of ever having one.
Chimney Flashing
Half the chimneys we are asked to reflash in Scranton should not be reflashed. They are abandoned coal flues on houses that stopped burning anthracite two generations ago, still standing through the roof, still leaking, and still costing money every time somebody goes up there with a caulk gun.
Emergency Tarping
Covering a roof at nine at night is triage. Two things have to be true by morning: no more water is entering the building, and nothing done in the dark has narrowed what you can do later.
Commercial Roofing
Commercial work in Scranton means the downtown masonry blocks, medical and professional space, schools and parish buildings, retail strips out along the highways, and the warehousing and light manufacturing that filled in along the old rail corridors on the valley floor. One point belongs up front because owners rarely know it.
Insurance Claim Help
The most useful thing on this page costs about forty-one dollars a year and pays us nothing at all. If you own a building in this valley and have never bought the Commonwealth's mine subsidence policy, that is the sentence worth acting on today.
What Scranton Customers Say
They pulled our address up on the state mine map before they even looked at the roof, printed the result, and told us to call the DEP and buy the subsidence policy first. Then they came back and did the tear-off. Nobody else who quoted us mentioned any of it.
We had two roofers tell us the chimney needed rebuilding and reflashing. These people asked what the flue was connected to, found out it was nothing, and took it down below the roof and framed over it. Half the price and the leak has not come back.
Our half of a double block, and they measured the whole roof and gave us a quote split at the property line so we could show it to next door. The seam where the two halves meet got lapped properly. Very straightforward people to deal with.
Honest to the point of talking themselves out of work. I asked about spraying something over our shingles and got a plain no with the reasons typed out for me. We hired them for the wall flashing and the eave vents instead, which is what the house actually needed.
Scranton Roof Pros covers Scranton, PA and the boroughs of Lackawanna County: roof replacement, roof leak repair, storm damage, wall and chimney flashing, ventilation, gutters and commercial low-slope systems. Licensed and insured. Laminated asphalt shingles, standing seam and ribbed steel, TPO and EPDM membrane, and the eave and wall details that decide how long any of it survives.
The question we ask first is one almost nobody else here asks out loud. Pennsylvania does not put mine subsidence on your homeowner policy. The standard form excludes the peril, and the Commonwealth sells a separate policy of its own through the Department of Environmental Protection, which means a house over the anthracite workings is either covered by that policy or covered by nothing.
So before we price a roof we look your address up on the department's mine viewer and tell you what it returns. Free inspections, the map result and the photographs in writing, an honest answer when a repair beats a replacement, and a plain recommendation to spend forty-one dollars with the Commonwealth before you spend eighteen thousand with us.
About Scranton Roof Pros in Scranton, PA
Scranton Roof Pros works on houses, double blocks and commercial buildings across Lackawanna County and the boroughs down the valley into Luzerne. Asphalt replacement and repair, steel panel roofs, low-slope membrane, wall and chimney flashing, intake and exhaust, gutters and emergency dry-in. City-licensed, insured, and content to have the class checked before anybody hires us.
What makes this company read differently is a document rather than a technique. In this state the ground under your house is a separate insurance question with a separate policy sold by a separate body, and roughly half of Scranton's thirty-five thousand housing units went up in 1939 or earlier, long before anyone was mapping what had already been taken out from underneath them.
There are jobs we turn down. We will not spray a film across a split detail so a sale can close quietly, and we will not write up a full replacement off one failed pipe collar. We also decline to cut a skylight into a hundred-year-old rafter roof without opening the ceiling first, and nobody's deductible is any of our business.
Recent Projects Across the Lackawanna Valley
Service Areas
Scranton Roof Pros serves Scranton, PA and surrounding communities including:
Commercial Roofing in Scranton and Down the Lackawanna Valley
We maintain, repair and replace low-slope roofs on downtown masonry blocks, medical and office space, schools, churches, retail strips and the warehousing and light manufacturing that fills the old rail corridors along the valley floor. Membrane in TPO or EPDM, torch-free bitumen where a roof gets walked, coatings only where a sound assembly genuinely warrants one, and drainage checked with a level rather than judged from a doorway.
- ✓Drainage shot at the drains and the high points and compared against the fall the roof was built with
- ✓Tapered insulation priced to rebuild slope where a deck has moved and reversed it
- ✓Fully adhered assemblies where an old plank or gypsum deck will not hold plate fasteners
- ✓Parapet, coping and through-wall terminations rebuilt rather than sealed over
- ✓Pitch pans cut out and replaced with formed penetration flashings
- ✓Phased night and weekend work on occupied buildings, section by section
- ✓Maintenance quoted honestly whenever it beats replacement for another few seasons
- ✓The Commonwealth's subsidence policy explained for commercial owners, including why its one million dollar ceiling is the number worth arguing about on a large building
Frequently Asked Questions
Does my homeowner insurance cover mine subsidence in Scranton?
Almost certainly not. Pennsylvania property policies exclude the peril, and the Commonwealth sells a separate policy through the Department of Environmental Protection instead. It has run since 1961. Some coal states go the other way and add the coverage to your policy by statute unless you decline it in writing, which is what Illinois does across its designated counties. Pennsylvania adds nothing. Read your declarations page.
What does the state subsidence policy cost, and what does it actually pay for?
Roughly twenty-seven cents per thousand dollars of coverage, so a hundred and fifty thousand runs about forty-one dollars a year, and the top of the range, a million dollars of coverage, runs about two hundred and fifty-four. It pays for damage to the building and its appurtenances from the collapse of coal or clay workings, or from a sudden unexpected breakout of mine water. Appurtenances are capped at a tenth of the amount.
How do I find out whether my street is over old workings?
The department publishes an address lookup. Type the property in and it returns one of two things: a known underground mining area, or ground where mineable coal exists but the department holds no record of whether anyone took it. The mine map atlas behind it carries scanned and geo-referenced anthracite plans. The department says plainly that it cannot vouch for the completeness of any of it, and we repeat that.
Why does anthracite ground behave differently from other coalfields?
The northern field's beds are steeply pitched and stacked several deep rather than lying flat, and the pillars left behind in the upper beds were often not set over the pillars below them. When one lets go it can punch through the interval rather than sag across a wide area. The surface result is frequently an abrupt local hole rather than a broad shallow dish.
Can I buy the policy after my house is already damaged?
Not while the damage sits unrepaired. The board will not issue on a structure whose integrity is in question until the repairs are done as it directs, and on lesser damage it wants either the repairs completed or a written estimate from a credible expert. This is exactly why we refuse to spray a coating over a split detail. It can put the policy out of reach.
Which towns around Scranton do you work in?
All of Lackawanna County, including Dunmore, Carbondale, Old Forge, Archbald, Blakely, Taylor, Dickson City, Moosic, Olyphant, Clarks Summit, Jessup, Throop, Jermyn, Moscow, Mayfield, Clarks Green and Dalton, plus Pittston, Exeter, Duryea, West Pittston, Avoca, Dupont, Hughestown and Laflin in Luzerne County, and out east to Honesdale in Wayne County.