Your roof warranty, in plain words

This comes with the shingle, it is in your name, and it covers the shingle being defective — the mat delaminating, the granules failing, the sealant strip not sealing. It does not cover the shingle being installed badly, and every manufacturer's document says so in the first page of exclusions.

Two things void it faster than anything else, and both are installer decisions. The first is an overlay: fastening through an existing layer is outside the printed instructions, so the cover goes. The second is inadequate ventilation: shingles are warranted on the assumption the deck can breathe, and a roof cooking at attic temperatures all summer ages from underneath. If a manufacturer ever inspects a failed roof, the intake vents are the first thing they count.

We register the warranty in your name and hand you the paperwork. We are not an “enhanced” or “preferred” contractor for any manufacturer, so what you get is the standard warranty on the shingle you chose, not an upgraded one. That is worth saying plainly, because the upgraded versions are the ones with the impressive numbers on them and they are only available through the program.

Five years, written, on everything we installed: the fastening, the flashing, the boots, the valleys, the drip edge and the dry-in. If water gets in through something we put on the roof, we come back and fix it and there is no charge and no argument about whose fault it was.

It is transferable once if you sell the house, which costs nothing and takes an email. It does not cover the parts of the building we did not touch, damage from someone else working on the roof afterwards, or a satellite dish bolted through the shingles by a technician in a hurry — that last one is more common than every other cause put together.

Wind above the shingle's rated speed, impact from a falling limb, a tree that comes through the deck, and anything an insurance policy is supposed to be for. Also, and this catches people: a leak that turns out to be a window head, a stucco crack, a chimney crown or a sweating air-conditioning line in the attic. We will still come and find it, and we will tell you it is not the roof, but we cannot warrant somebody else's wall.

A long workmanship warranty from a small roofer is a promise that a specific person will still be answering the phone in fifteen years. Five is a number we can look at honestly. Anyone quoting you twenty-five years of labor cover is either backed by a manufacturer program — ask to see the certificate — or is describing something that has never been tested.