A roof replacement is priced off the roof, not off the house. Eight things move the number: the squares of roof area, the pitch, how many storeys the crew works above, how many old layers come off, what the deck looks like once it is bare, the shingle tier, how many valleys and penetrations get flashed by hand, and whether an insurance claim is paying.
A roof replacement is priced by the square, one square being one hundred square feet of finished roof. Everything else is a multiplier on that base. The steeper the pitch and the higher the work, the slower the day. The more old layers come off, the more labour and landfill weight. The more valleys, skylights and chimneys, the more hand-cut flashing. That is why two Calgary homes with identical square footage on the tax assessment carry very different roof numbers, and why anyone quoting yours without measuring it is quoting somebody else’s roof.
One square is one hundred square feet of finished roof. The crew measures the roof itself, adds a waste factor for the cuts at hips and valleys, and prices from there.
Two bungalows on one street can land far apart before anyone picks a shingle. One has a simple gable and one layer. The other has three dormers, a skylight, a chimney and two layers.
Nobody sees the deck from the driveway. A quote that handles that honestly carries a written allowance with a rate attached, so you already know what happens if boards need replacing.
Eight things, in roughly the order they move the number. Read them in sequence and your quote stops being one figure and becomes a list you can check.
The base of every quote. A square is one hundred square feet of roof surface, measured on the slope rather than the floor plan, so a steeper roof over the same footprint carries more area. Add a waste factor for the cuts at hips and valleys and you have the number everything else multiplies.
Slope and height are safety costs first. Past a certain pitch a crew cannot walk the roof freely, and the job needs staging, anchors and roof jacks. A third storey, a walkout lot, or a side yard with nowhere for the bin works the same way.
Tear-off is priced by weight and by time. One layer off a clean deck is a straightforward morning. Older inner-city Calgary homes often carry two or three, because roofing over the top was once normal practice, and each extra layer is more labour and more disposal.
Nobody can price the sheathing until the roof is bare, and that includes us. Most Calgary decks are sound. Some hide soft plywood around a chimney, delaminated board over an old leak, or shiplap too gapped for modern fasteners.
The shingle is the part homeowners compare, and it is rarely the biggest swing on the page. What sits beneath it counts for as much: ice and water membrane at eaves, valleys and penetrations, synthetic underlayment across the field, new starter strip and new drip edge.
Field shingles go down quickly. Everything the roof has to seal against does not. Each valley, skylight, chimney, dormer wall and plumbing stack is hand work, and each one is where a rushed roof leaks. Old flashing bent back into service is the cheapest way to buy a leak.
A replacement is the only sensible moment to correct ventilation, and plenty of Calgary attics have never had enough. Exhaust at the ridge only works with matching intake at the soffit, and intake buried under blown insulation does nothing.
A hail claim changes the arithmetic, because the figure that matters becomes your deductible and the scope your insurer approves rather than the price of the roof. What we control is the documentation: dated photographs, a scope an adjuster can read, and somebody on the roof when they visit.
Calgary’s install season is short, which packs a year of replacements into a few months and puts pressure on every one of these lines. When you are ready to go ahead, our roof replacement page covers the work itself. If the roof may not be finished yet, start with roof repair.
Red Seal Certified
Interprovincial Standard
Roof pricing earned its reputation through verbal quoting. A figure said out loud in a driveway cannot be checked, cannot be compared, and has a habit of moving once the shingles come off. Ours are written and handed over after the roof has been measured rather than before. Where something cannot be known until the deck is bare, it goes in as a written allowance with a rate attached. In-house Red Seal crews, COR safety certification and $10M liability coverage sit behind it.
Ask for these as separate lines. Two quotes only become comparable once both of them itemise, and the gap between a cheap number and a fair one is usually sitting in a line that one of them left out.
Get a Written QuoteIt does cost more, and in a hail city the second half of that question gets a yes more often than it would elsewhere. Calgary sits in one of the most hail-exposed regions in the country, and the shingle is the layer that takes the strike. Here are the three tiers you will be offered, compared on relative cost and published impact rating rather than a dollar figure we cannot know for your roof.
Entry level
A single flat layer with cut-out tabs, and the cheapest way to put a roof back on. It is disappearing from Calgary because the tabs are the first thing a foothills wind finds. It still earns its place on a garage.
The Calgary standard
Two bonded layers, noticeably heavier, far better at staying put in wind. This is what most Calgary replacements use, and the tier most manufacturer certifications are written around. The step up from 3-tab is modest next to the labour underneath.
Hail country
Modified asphalt or an added reinforcing mat, so the shingle absorbs a strike instead of cracking. Class 4 is the top result in the UL 2218 steel-ball impact test, a laboratory standard rather than a promise about any particular storm.
Relative cost compares the tiers against each other on the same roof and says nothing about what your roof will come to. Any shingle only performs over correct ventilation and a sound deck, so the tier matters less than the assembly it goes into.
That depends on your policy, and anyone answering it without reading yours is guessing. Alberta home policies are generally written to respond to sudden storm damage, but your coverage, your deductible, and whether a settlement is based on actual cash value or replacement cost are specific to the contract you signed. What we can tell you is how the process runs: documentation, timing, and whether somebody who understands roofs is there when the adjuster is.
Dated photographs, measurements, and a scope in the terms an adjuster works with. Hail bruising is often invisible from the ground, so an undocumented claim gets settled on a drive-by impression.
Policies carry reporting windows, and a storm that did no visible harm can still have taken years off the roof. An inspection on record after a big Calgary hailstorm keeps the option open.
Your deductible is set by your policy and paid by you. Be careful with any contractor offering to make it disappear, because that arrangement is a problem for you as much as them.
Coverage, limits and deductibles are set by your individual policy, and nothing on this page changes what an insurer will approve. Our storm work sits on our storm and hail restoration page.
Sometimes. More often the gap between two roofing numbers is scope rather than margin. The working season here is short, which crams a year of roofs into a few months and leaves room for crews that price to win the job and make it back on change orders. The three places a low number comes from are invisible from the ground once the job is done.
Roofing over an existing layer saves a day of labour and a bin of disposal. It also traps the old problem under the new roof and shortens the life of what you just bought.
Reused drip edge, valley metal and step flashing is the quietest saving on any quote, and the first place a new roof leaks.
No decking allowance, no rate for one, nothing about ventilation. The number reads lower because the risky lines were left off, and they arrive later as an extra you did not agree to.
No phone quotes, and no square-footage guesses off a real estate listing. Here is what happens between your call and the written figure.
Squares, pitch, valleys and penetrations taken off the roof itself, never off a listing.
We check at the eave and the vents to see how many roofs are already up there.
Soft spots, sagging, deck type and ventilation, so the unknowns get named before they become extras.
Tear-off, disposal, membrane, underlayment, flashing, ventilation and material tier, priced separately.
A clear written number, allowances named with rates attached, and a walkthrough of what would change it.
A handful of things move the number far more than anything else: the roof area measured in squares, the pitch, the number of storeys and site access because those change how the crew has to work and stage safely, how many existing layers have to come off and be disposed of, the condition of the decking once it is exposed, the material tier you choose, the ventilation work the roof needs, the complexity of the roof itself, and whether the job runs through an insurance claim or out of pocket. A simple bungalow and a steep two-storey with multiple valleys, skylights and a chimney are different jobs even at identical square footage.
Usually because they are not quoting the same job. One may assume the decking is sound while another allows for replacing some of it, one may include tear-off and disposal of a second layer while another does not, one may quote a standard laminate against another impact-rated shingle, and ventilation, flashing and permits may be in one scope and absent from the other. Compare what is actually included line by line before comparing totals.
Yes. A steep pitch slows everything down and changes the safety setup, since crews need staging and fall protection they would not need on a walkable roof, and material handling gets harder. Height matters for the same reason. Two roofs with identical area can carry meaningfully different labour just because one is walkable and the other is not.
It can change what you personally pay considerably, because a covered hail or storm claim shifts much of the cost to the insurer and leaves you responsible for your deductible and anything outside the claim scope. Whether your damage is covered depends on your policy, your deductible and the adjuster assessment. We document what we find so you have what you need for a claim, but confirm coverage with your insurer directly.
Not if it wins on price by leaving something out. The usual omissions are tear-off and disposal, replacement of damaged decking, correcting flashing at the details where leaks actually start, and proper ventilation. Those things do not stop being necessary because they are absent from a quote, they just get paid for later, and re-doing a detail after the roof is on costs more than doing it once.
Because two of the biggest variables cannot be seen from a driveway or a description. Nobody knows how many layers are actually on the roof until an edge is lifted, and nobody knows what the decking underneath looks like until the old roof comes off. A number given before the roof is measured and looked at is a guess, and guesses move once work starts. A quote worth comparing comes after a measured assessment and states in writing what happens if damaged decking turns up.
Tell us where the house is and what you are seeing. We’ll measure the roof, check what is under it where we can, and give you a written number with every allowance named.
Serving: Calgary, Airdrie, Cochrane, Okotoks, Chestermere. Flexible financing available. Ready to go ahead? See roof replacement.