Above Par Construction

I had my roof replaced by Above Par in August of 2016. Three workmanship quality issues were discovered. The first issue was that the newly installed roof ridge vent was not installed per the manufacturers specification with nails of the correct length. The install crew simply continued using their nail guns with the 1 1/4 inch nails used for the shingles. By itself, this Owens Corning ridge vent product is nominally an inch thick, Once shingles are added on top of the vent, the thickness exceeds one inch. This resulted in the 1 1/4 inch nails used barely piercing the new shingles and wood deck below it. In other words, the entire roof vent system was barely tacked in place, could be easily pulled off by hand and would surely have come off with wind leaving the entire roof ridge open to the elements. Owens Corning ridge vent installation instructions state: "6. Nail hip and ridge shingle over the vent using nails long enough to meet the penetration requirements of the shingle manufacturer or use nails provided with the VentSure® ridge vent". Indeed nails were provided with the ridge vent system and were approximately 2 inches in length. This was discovered almost immediately after the new roof was installed and repaired shortly thereafter. The second workmanship quality issue is that for a large section of the roof on the back of the house, lower quality nails were substituted for those that were specified. At the outset in my contract with Above Par, I specified double hot dipped galvanized nails rather than inferior electroplated nails in common industry use today. Brian agreed and noted it in our agreement. I purchased them independently and provided them at the worksite. It wasn't until I happened to observe the roofer on the back roof using the wrong nails that I was able to correct the situation but, by then, a considerable section of that roof area had been completed. The third quality issue did not become apparent until sometime--March/April of the following year when melting snow and rain was prevalent. In this case, the flashing around the skylight was compromised such that water bypassed and ran down the interior surfaces of the wall all the way to the first floor kitchen. My tenants put towels in place to capture the water that would collect on the countertop and window sill. In addition to new flashing, this condition required a drywall repair on an interior wall. The workmanship error was threefold: 1. The original copper flashing was evidently unique to the roofer with a design feature designed to act as a gutter to channel water away from the skylight and prevent it from traveling beneath the shingles. This must have been unfamiliar to the roofer because rather than restoring the roofing system around the skylight to its original configuration, they defeated that feature by smashing it down with a hammer. 2. The ice & water shield product used around the skylight was then placed over (rather than under) the existing flashing and nailed in place through the existing flashing. 3. New shingles were then installed around the skylight but without new step flashing installed to compensate for the loss of the existing flashing effectivity. It seems evident that the roofer realized a risk of leakage due to that configuration because there was application of roof sealant to the the seam where the new shingles abutted the vertical face of the existing flashing on one side of the skylight when none is normally required. For some reason, they did not apply roof sealant to the other side of the skylight and it is there that the leak entry point was located. I would probably not be revising this review except that Above Par management utterly failed to engage to fix the flashing problem. After 7 months of stonewalling and over 12 months with that leak condition, after paying in advance for a repair proposal provided on Sept 18 2017 and another winter season approaching, I could not continue waiting for Above Par to honor their warrantee and act on the repair work necessary to fix the leak around my skylight. I hired another roofer who arrived within a day or two and totally reflashed it for $500. At a minimum, the first and third issue would also certainly have been cited by Owens Corning were it discovered in the context of any future potential product warrantee claim. Lastly, I noticed that there were nearly no responses from Above Par to the reviews on Angie's List. I expect none here and conclude that Above Par is simply living up to it's chosen company name.