Serving Gaylord & Otsego County
Gaylord sits at 1,348 feet in Northern Michigan's snowbelt and averages around 140 inches of snow a year. That's a lot of winter for a roof to carry. Here's how we build and repair them for it.
Awesome company!!! They do great work at fair prices. Very nice and polite workers. They go the extra mile!!
Our office is at 104 S Union Street Suite 208 in downtown Traverse City. From there, Gaylord is about 60 miles east, usually a little over an hour and a quarter, heading out on M-72.
That's not around the corner, and we won't pretend it is. We plan Gaylord jobs as full days, bring everything the job needs on the first trip and schedule around the forecast, so the work gets done without a string of half-days and your roof is never left open overnight.
Gaylord started as a railroad stop. It was first called Barnes, after Orlando Barnes, a railroad secretary and state representative, and in 1874 it became the Village of Gaylord, named for Augustine Smith Gaylord, an attorney for the Michigan Central Railroad who never actually lived there. It was incorporated as a village in 1881 and as a city in 1922.
Today Gaylord is the seat of Otsego County and the only city in it, with 4,286 people in the 2020 census, up from 3,645 in 2010. Its downtown is known for its Tyrolean-style buildings, which earned it the nickname "The Alpine Village", and the area around it has one of the largest concentrations of ski and golf resorts in the Midwest.
It also sits high. At 1,348 feet, Gaylord is far above the bays and lakeshores, on the 45th parallel and right in Northern Michigan's snowbelt.
Weight comes first. Gaylord averages around 140 inches of snow a year, and on a shaded or low-pitched roof a lot of it stays put for months. A roof deck that has gone soft, or framing that was marginal to start with, shows it here before it would anywhere else.
Ice dams come next. With that much snow sitting on the roof, any heat leaking into the attic melts it from underneath. The water runs to the cold eaves, refreezes, and backs up under the shingles. In a snowbelt town, attic ventilation and ice and water shield at the eaves and valleys are not upgrades, they are the baseline.
Gutters and fascia take a beating too. Snow and ice slide off the roof into the gutters, and a gutter that is loose, undersized or hung on soft fascia usually comes down by March. Siding takes its share where drifts pile against walls and meltwater sits at the bottom courses.
So we build for the snow: ice and water shield at the eaves and valleys, ventilation that keeps the deck cold, gutters fastened for snow load on solid fascia, and siding with proper wrap and flashing behind it.
Replacement and repair for snowbelt roofs: stripped to the deck, soft decking replaced, ice and water shield at the eaves and valleys, and ventilation that keeps the deck cold under a winter of snow.
More about roofing →Sized for the roof and fastened securely enough to carry snow and ice, so they are still on the house in spring.
More about seamless gutters →Ice and overflow rot the board behind a gutter. We replace soft fascia before new gutters go up, so they have something solid to hang on.
More about fascia →Low upkeep for a long winter. Proper house wrap and flashing behind it keep drifting snow and meltwater out of the wall.
More about vinyl siding →Everything we do on the outside of a house:
We come out to Gaylord, walk the outside of the house and get into the attic where we can, because that is where ice dams and soft decking start.
You get the scope, the materials and the price in writing before anything starts. If a repair will do, we tell you.
Our own crew, working to the manufacturer spec, scheduled around the weather rather than ahead of a storm.
We magnet-sweep for nails, haul the debris away and go over the finished job with you before we leave.
We know Gaylord has contractors of its own. What we offer is a crew trained and certified on the shingles it installs, a written plan before any work starts, and a straight answer about whether your roof needs replacing or just repairing. If a repair will do, we'll tell you, even when that means a smaller job for us.
Tell us what your roof, siding or gutters are doing and we'll come out and take a look.
Get A Free Estimateor call (231) 377-3620