Roofing in Somerville
Somerville is the seat of Somerset County, and it built its downtown to be walked. The Beaux-Arts county courthouse from the early 1900s anchors East Main Street, the cobblestone plaza on Division Street closes to cars for markets and live music, and the blocks in between are lined with two-story brick storefronts, shops at the sidewalk and offices or apartments above. Almost none of those buildings show their roofs from the street. Each hides a low-slope membrane behind a parapet or a decorative cornice, draining to internal leaders or to scuppers cut through the parapet, and that roof holds only when the flashing carrying the membrane up the wall and the metal coping across the top are both sound.
Step off Main Street and the housing turns older and more ornate. The historic-district blocks along High and Doughty and the side streets are largely late-Victorian and early-twentieth-century, stately homes with turrets, cross-gables, and deep porches, with plainer colonials mixed in. Roofs like these are all shape: every dormer, turret, and intersecting gable adds another valley and another cheek wall, and each of those junctions depends on a sound valley liner and clean step-and-counter-flashing to stay watertight through a hard rain.
That span, colonial through late-Victorian, with storefronts and stone churches on the state and national registers, is what makes roofing here its own kind of work. Many of these buildings were framed and flashed long before ice-and-water shield, self-adhered underlayment, or standardized pipe boots existed. Getting them right means matching the detail to the building: a slate or architectural-shingle roof over deep older rafters, valley liner and eave protection where the pitch and the age call for it, and chimney flashing rebuilt down into the masonry so the joint sheds water on its own.
Low-slope roofs downtown, steep slate on the side streets
Downtown, the storefronts share party walls, so a two-story building's low-slope roof often dead-ends against the taller brick wall of its neighbor. That tie-in, the cheek wall, is where these roofs usually let go: the counter-flashing cut into the neighbor's brick works loose, or the coping joints over the parapet open up, and water tracks down inside the party wall where nobody notices until the plaster stains in the shop below. The repairs are unglamorous and specific, reset the coping with proper joint covers, re-cut that flashing into a raked mortar joint, and keep the scuppers and conductor heads clear so the membrane drains instead of ponding behind the cornice.
On the side streets the challenge is shape and age. A Victorian with a corner turret and a couple of dormers can carry six or more valleys, and the wide original brick chimneys need a cricket on the up-slope side so runoff splits around the stack instead of piling against it. On the older colonials the roof plane may be simple, but the chimney flashing and the eaves are usually the most tired details on the house. More often than not the right call is targeted, a fresh valley liner, new step-and-counter-flashing, and ice-and-water shield run up from the eaves, well short of a full tear-off.
Somerset County Weather & Wear
Somerset is hilly enough to get heavier wet snow than the coastal counties; high-pitch roofs here need full ice-and-water-shield coverage at eaves and valleys.
Services for Somerville Homes
Every Tri-State service is available to Somerville homeowners. Click any service for the full scope and pricing details.
Roof Inspection
Comprehensive multi-point inspections that catch problems early.
Roof Repairs
Fast, lasting fixes for leaks, missing shingles, and storm damage.
Roof Replacement
Full tear-off replacements with architectural shingles and a written warranty.
Gutter Cleaning & Installation
Keep water moving away from your home with clean, well-pitched gutters.
Chimney Repair & Servicing
Crown repair, tuckpointing, flashing, and chimney rebuilds.
Concrete Slab Foundations
Poured slab foundations for additions, garages, and outbuildings.
Vinyl Siding Installation
Modern, low-maintenance siding that boosts curb appeal and value.
Metal Roofing Installation & Repair
Standing-seam and metal roofing built to outlast asphalt by decades.
Slate Roofing Installation & Repair
Natural and synthetic slate — the longest-lasting roof you can buy.
Tile Roofing Installation & Repair
Clay and concrete tile roofing with a 50+ year lifespan.
Flat Roof Repair & Replacement
TPO, EPDM, and modified bitumen for flat and low-slope roofs.
Skylight Installation & Repair
Leak-free skylight installation, replacement, and re-flashing.
Foundation Repair & Waterproofing
Crack repair, basement waterproofing, drainage, and structural fixes.
Masonry, Brick & Concrete
Brick & stone repointing, steps, walkways, concrete repair, and restoration.
Retaining Walls & Hardscaping
Engineered retaining walls, paver patios, walkways, and drainage.
Roofing Materials We Install in Somerville
Different Somerville homes need different roof systems. Here are the material tiers we install most often in this part of Somerset County — picked based on the housing stock, climate exposure, and the kind of work Somerville homeowners actually ask us for.
Architectural Asphalt Shingle
Best value for most NJ homes
Designer / Luxury Asphalt
Upgraded curb appeal + longer warranty
Cedar Shake & Shingle
Natural look for historic homes
Standing-Seam Metal
Lifetime roof for steep pitches
Slate & Synthetic Slate
Premium, lifetime, often required
How Your Somerville Roof Project Runs
Every job follows the same five steps, from the first call to the final magnetic nail sweep:
- 1Free on-site inspection
- 2Written estimate with photos
- 3Material delivery and crew dispatch
- 4Tear-off, deck inspection, and install
- 5Final walkthrough and warranty registration
Common Somerville Roof Problems We Fix
Patterns we see again and again on Somerville roofs — most driven by the local housing stock and Somerset County climate. If any of these sound familiar, give us a call for a free on-site assessment.
- The two-story Main Street and Division Street storefronts hide low-slope membrane roofs behind their cornices, where ponding and open coping joints go unnoticed from the plaza until water is already inside the wall.
- Where a shorter storefront roof dead-ends against a taller neighbor's brick party wall, the cheek-wall flashing and the parapet coping are the first details to fail on the tight downtown grid.
- Historic-district Victorians stack up valleys, dormer cheek walls, and turret junctions, so keeping one dry means getting every valley liner and dormer flashing right.
- The original brick chimneys on the older colonials and Victorians are wide enough to need a cricket or saddle on the up-slope side, plus counter-flashing cut into the mortar joints, not surface caulk.
- Houses framed before modern underlayment have little protection at the eaves, so ice-and-water shield up from the gutter line, correct pipe boots, and proper vent flashing matter more here than any premium shingle.
Coverage in Somerville
We schedule extended-area projects in batches so we can keep response times reasonable. Free estimates and full installs are our regular pattern here.
Call (201) 779-3961 and we'll confirm exactly when we can be at your Somerville property.
Nearby Somerset County Cities
We cover Somerset County on a planned schedule, batching nearby projects together. It's the same crew and the same written workmanship warranty in every town on this list.
Every NJ County We Serve
We cover every county in New Jersey from our Garfield headquarters. Open a county for response times, town coverage, and the roof issues we see most in that part of the state.