Somerville is one of the densest cities in the country, and on a roof that stops being trivia about ten minutes into the first site visit. We replace roofs, fix leaks and hang siding here on two- and three-families packed onto lots with no driveway — and nearly every decision, from where the dumpster goes to how the porch roof gets flashed, follows from how tight the street is.
On a suburban ranch you back the truck up the driveway and start. Here, where the dumpster sits, where the bundles land and whose property the ladder leans over get decided before a start date exists. That’s what keeps a job from stalling on day one.
What we’re actually working on in Somerville
The city is overwhelmingly two- and three-family wood-frame houses, most built between roughly 1890 and 1930, packed onto narrow lots on narrow streets. That produces the same few things over and over:
- A simple main roof and a complicated back. The front gable or hip is straightforward. The back is where the ell, the porch stack and the additions collide.
- Stacked rear porches. Two or three floors of back porch with a low-slope roof over the top one — the most common leak source in this city.
- Low-slope and dead-flat sections. Porch tops, rear ells, connectors to an addition. None can take asphalt shingles.
- Houses eight to twelve feet apart. A north or east slope on a narrow street sits in shade most of the winter.
- Siding in layers. Vinyl from the 1970s or 1980s over the original clapboard — and the vinyl now looks the older of the two.
So a Somerville roof usually isn’t one roof. It’s a shingle roof, a membrane roof, and three or four transitions between them — and the transitions are the job.
Access, dumpsters and the street
Most of the houses we work on here have no driveway, which changes the logistics of every service we offer.
The dumpster. With no off-street spot it goes on the street, which means arranging street occupancy with the city and, on many blocks, posting the resident spaces it takes. That’s handled before the start date and written into the estimate.
Material delivery. Bundles get boom-loaded straight onto the roof instead of stacked in a yard that doesn’t exist — which needs a clear approach for the truck on a street parked bumper to bumper on both sides.
Drop zone and the property line. Tear-off debris has to fall somewhere controlled, and on a lot this tight that’s a six-to-ten-foot side yard with someone else’s house on the far side of the fence — tarped and boarded, not trusted. On plenty of these lots the work on your rear slope is physically over the line, so we talk to the abutter before the job, not during it.
Roof replacement on a Somerville two- or three-family
A full replacement here is a mixed-system job, and that’s what separates a real Somerville estimate from a template one. If a quote prices the whole roof by the square in architectural shingle and never mentions the porch roof, nobody walked the back of the house.
| Section | What belongs there | Why it matters here |
|---|---|---|
| Main pitched slopes | Tear-off, ice & water shield at eaves and valleys, synthetic underlayment, architectural shingles | Standard — but the eave membrane matters more on a shaded, narrow-street slope |
| Rear porch-stack top and flat ells | Single-ply or modified-bitumen membrane, properly terminated | Shingles on a slope this shallow will leak. It’s a question of when, not if |
| Pitched-to-flat transition | Membrane run up under the shingle course, flashed properly, no reliance on sealant | Where most Somerville leaks start |
| Party-wall side and abutting walls | New step flashing and counterflashing where the roof meets a wall | Hard to redo later without staging over the neighbor’s yard again |
Ventilation is the other Somerville-specific piece. Many of these houses have finished third floors or knee-wall attics where a standard ridge-vent-and-soffit-intake setup doesn’t exist and can’t simply be added, so we look at what’s up there before promising a ventilation fix. For the numbers, read what a roof replacement costs in Massachusetts — access and complexity are two of the biggest drivers, and this city has both.
Roof repair and the leaks this city actually produces
Plenty of the calls we get here are repairs, not replacements, and we say so when that’s the case. The recurring list:
- The porch-stack roof. Old rolled roofing or failed membrane over the top porch, usually ponding with an open seam. Water shows up on the floor below, so it reads like a wall leak.
- Pitched-to-flat transitions. Sealed with caulk by someone before you, and the caulk is done.
- Ice dams on shaded north slopes. Narrow street, the house next door blocking low winter sun, snow that never melts off, meltwater backing under the shingles — a ventilation and insulation problem far more often than a shingle problem.
- Chimney and wall flashing. Counterflashing on a 100-year-old brick chimney that was never cut into the mortar properly.
There’s a dedicated Somerville roof repair page, and our roof repair page covers how we diagnose. If water is coming in now, call (617) 721-1814.
Siding on a lot with six feet of side yard
Somerville siding work has one hard constraint: you often can’t get more than a few feet back from the wall you’re working on. That rules out some staging and makes a full siding replacement slower and more hand-worked than the same square footage in a suburb.
What’s under the old material is the other half. Many of these houses have 1970s or 1980s vinyl over original clapboard, sometimes with no house wrap and occasionally with trapped moisture and rot behind it on the shaded side — so we open a section and look before quoting the whole house. Vinyl and fiber cement both work here; fiber cement is heavier and slower in tight quarters, which is a real cost factor on this kind of lot.
When the roof has more than one owner
A two- or three-family roof isn’t always one person’s decision. We work with owner-occupants, absentee owners and condo associations where each floor is separately owned. That means an estimate written so it can be circulated and understood by someone who wasn’t on the roof with us, and scheduling that accounts for several households.
Somerville roofing questions
My street has no driveway and every space is taken. Where does the dumpster go?
On the street near the house, with occupancy arranged with the city ahead of time and the affected spaces posted. On very tight blocks we’ll use a smaller container and swap it mid-job rather than take more curb. If there’s a usable side yard, we’ll use that. Either way it’s sorted before the start date and it’s in the written estimate.
We’re a two-family with two owners. How do we get one roof decision made?
We write the estimate so both owners can read it without us in the room — sections broken out, what’s included, what’s optional, what happens if the decking is worse than expected. If the porch-stack roof can be done separately from the main roof, we’ll price it that way: sometimes one part is urgent and the other has years left. And we’ll walk the roof twice if the second owner wants to see it.
Can you shingle the flat roof over our back porch?
No, and anyone who offers to is selling you a leak. Shingles need pitch to shed water; on a low-slope porch roof, water sits and works backwards under the courses. That section needs a membrane. It costs more per square foot but it’s a small fraction of the roof area — and it’s the part most likely to be leaking already.
Why does one side of our roof look so much worse than the other?
Usually shade. On a narrow street the north or east slope gets little direct winter sun, so it stays damp, grows moss and algae, holds snow and builds ice at the eave while the sunny slope is clear. Same age, different exposure — and it’s one reason we won’t quote a roof from the sidewalk.