A roof replacement in Calgary runs on the storm calendar. We strip the old roof to bare deck, fix what we find underneath, and put the new roof back on with the same in-house Red Seal crews, from the first shingle pulled to the last nail driven.
Plan on fifteen to twenty-five years from an asphalt roof in Calgary, and treat anything past that as borrowed time. The shingle itself is often rated for longer, and in a milder climate it would get there. This is not a milder climate. Hail is the single biggest reason Calgary roofs come off early, and it does not need to punch a hole to finish one. A stone that bruises the mat under the granules leaves a spot that sheds grit for the next two summers until the asphalt underneath is bare. Add a winter of chinooks that thaw and refreeze the same roof a dozen times, and gusts off the foothills that work a lifted tab loose, and the honest number for this city sits well short of the number printed on the bundle wrapper.
Most Calgary roofs are replaced because of hail rather than old age. Impact bruises the shingle mat, and the damage often surfaces as accelerated granule loss months later, long after the storm everybody remembers.
A February afternoon can lift a Calgary roof above freezing and drop it back by evening. That cycle works meltwater into every seam it can reach, then expands it overnight. Nothing ages a roof here faster.
Our wind arrives in gusts and finds the weakest edge first, usually a rake, a ridge or an already-lifted tab. Once a shingle breaks its seal it flutters, and a fluttering shingle is one storm away from gone.
Replace when the failures stop being local. One lifted tab, one leaking vent boot or one damaged valley is a repair, and a straight roofer will tell you so. When the same roof needs a third repair in three years, when granule loss is spread across whole elevations instead of one slope, or when the deck underneath has started to give, you are paying twice for the same roof. Walk the perimeter after the next real hailstorm and look for these.
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A tear-off opens your house up. For part of a day the only thing between your ceiling and a Calgary sky is a deck and a layer of membrane, which is exactly why it matters who is standing on it. Our crews are in-house and Red Seal certified, so the people pulling the old roof off are the people drying it in, and there is no subcontractor handoff in the middle of the one day the house is open. Backed by COR safety certification and $10M liability coverage.
A full replacement on a family home, a new roof on a build or an addition, or the second opinion that tells you this roof still has years left in it. Every square installed in-house by our certified crews.
Before anyone quotes a tear-off we get on the roof, lift shingles, look at the deck where it can be seen, and photograph what is actually there. You get the verdict in writing, including the case for repairing instead if that is what the roof is telling us.
Everything comes off down to the deck. Old shingles, old felt, old flashing. We check the sheathing and replace what has gone soft, run ice-and-water membrane at the eaves and valleys, cover the rest in synthetic underlayment, and shingle from there.
Calgary is a hail city, and the shingle you choose changes how the roof behaves in the next storm. We walk you through laminate profiles, colour against your siding and trim, and where an impact-rated product is worth the step up.
Shingles rarely leak first. The joints do. A replacement is the one chance you get to redo the valley metal, the step flashing at a chimney, the vent boots and the sidewall detail while the roof is open and everything is reachable.
The granules go first, then the mat, then the seal. An asphalt shingle is a fibreglass mat soaked in asphalt and armoured with ceramic granules, and each of those layers has a Calgary enemy. The granules take the hail and the summer UV. The asphalt underneath dries and stiffens once that armour thins. The self-sealing strip that glues every course down loses its grip in the cold and hands the wind something to lift. Homeowners almost never shop for a roof by material, they shop for the job, which is why asphalt gets decided in the last five minutes of a quote instead of the first. It deserves better, because the shingle is where both the money and the lifespan actually sit.
Older Calgary roofs are often 3-tab, a single flat layer with cutouts. Laminate bonds two layers together, so there is more asphalt and more mass in the path of a hailstone. Almost every Calgary roof replaced today goes back on as laminate.
Look in the trough after a downpour. Grit collecting there means the armour is leaving. Once the mat is exposed the asphalt cooks, stiffens and cracks, and no amount of patching puts granules back on a bald shingle.
Shingles bond by warmth. Laid in genuinely cold weather they need hand-sealing to set, and a course that never seals is a course the wind can open. It is one of the reasons the installation window matters so much here.
Ice damming belongs in the same conversation. Heat escaping into the attic melts snow high on the roof, the meltwater refreezes at the cold eave, and the water backing up behind that ridge of ice goes under the shingles rather than over them. A replacement is when that gets fixed properly, with membrane at the eaves and attic ventilation checked while the roof is open. If the roof is sound and the trouble is one leak or one slope, start with our roof repair page instead.
Architectural laminate is the right answer on most Calgary homes. Impact-rated laminate is worth the step up if you sit in a hail corridor or you have already claimed once, because it is built to take a strike without bruising through. Designer laminate buys appearance and mass rather than a different class of protection. The choice comes down to how exposed your roof is and how long you plan to own it.
Calgary default
Two bonded layers, a shadow line that reads as depth from the street, and the profile on the large majority of Calgary roofs. It handles ordinary wind and rain without complaint and shrugs off small hail. Large hail will still bruise it, which is the honest limit of the category rather than a fault in the product.
Built for hail
Made to pass an impact test that ends a standard shingle, usually through a modified asphalt that flexes under a strike instead of fracturing. In a hail city that is the difference between a bruised roof and an intact one. Ask your insurer what they do with the rating before you decide, because the answer varies by carrier.
Heaviest profile
Thicker, heavier, and cut to imitate slate or wood shake. It earns its money on a complex roof with a lot of visible surface, where the roof is most of what you see from the curb. Weight is not the same as an impact rating, so pair it with a Class 4 product if hail is the thing you are actually solving for.
Those lifespans are manufacturer-typical ranges for a roof that never meets serious hail, and Calgary rarely offers one. What you actually pay is driven by roof area, pitch, how many layers are coming off, the number of valleys, chimneys and vents to detail, and what the deck looks like once it is open. We break the pricing down properly on our roof replacement cost page. If a storm is the reason you are here and there is an insurance claim behind it, our storm and hail restoration page covers how that runs. Relative material cost compares these materials to each other, not a quote for your project. Your price depends on size, access and what we find underneath.
Most single-family asphalt re-roofs in Calgary are a one to two day job, and the roof is watertight at the end of each of those days. Size, pitch, the number of layers coming off and the amount of deck repair found underneath are what stretch it. Season matters more than homeowners expect. Asphalt seals by warmth, so shingles laid in the shoulder season may need hand-sealing to bond, and a genuinely cold spell narrows the workable window further. The practical consequence is a queue: spring and summer slots fill up with the claims from the previous hail season. If your roof only made it through last year on a repair, book the assessment early rather than in the middle of July.
The comfortable shingling window here is a stretch of the year, not all of it. Work outside it is possible with cold-weather methods, but the shingles need help to seal and the schedule needs a weather window.
Tear-off is loud and it is dusty. We tarp what needs tarping, keep the driveway usable where we can, and run a magnet over the lawn, the beds and the walkways for nails before the crew leaves.
Whatever comes off in a day gets dried in the same day. Membrane and underlayment go down over every square we strip, so the house is closed to weather before anyone drives away.
Timelines shift with roof size, access, the weather and what the deck turns out to be hiding, so treat the one to two days as the usual case we confirm on your home rather than a fixed promise. Complex rooflines, steep pitches and multi-layer tear-offs all take longer, and we would rather tell you that at the estimate than on the second morning.
A replacement runs smoothly when the assessment is honest and the scope is written down before anyone climbs a ladder. Here is exactly what to expect.
We walk the roof, lift shingles at the failure points, check the eaves and valleys, and photograph what we find so you can see it from the ground.
A clear scope in writing, then a straight conversation about profile, colour and whether an impact-rated shingle is worth it on your exposure.
The old roof comes off to bare sheathing. Anything soft or delaminated is replaced then, while it is open and visible, rather than shingled over.
Ice-and-water at the eaves and valleys, synthetic underlayment over the field, new flashing at every penetration, then the shingles go on.
We run a magnet over the lawn, beds and driveway for nails, then walk the finished roof and the paperwork with you.
Shorter than the number printed on the shingle wrapper. A laminate asphalt shingle rated for a long service life elsewhere gets a harder time here from hail strikes, high-altitude UV and chinook cycles that expand and contract the roof through a forty-degree swing in a day. Hail is the single biggest factor: one significant event can take years off a roof that was otherwise doing fine.
Granules collecting in the eavestrough, shingles curling or cupping at the edges, bald patches where the mat is showing, repeated repairs in different areas, and daylight visible through the sheathing from inside the attic. One of those on its own may be a repair. Several of them together, on a roof that is already well into its service life, means you are spending money to delay the inevitable.
For a lot of Calgary homes, yes. Impact-rated shingles are built with a tougher mat that resists the fracturing hail causes, and they hold up measurably better through a hail event than a standard laminate. They cost more up front. Whether that trade is worth it depends on how exposed your roof is and how long you plan to stay, and some insurers treat an impact-rated roof differently, which is worth asking your provider about directly.
We strongly prefer it, and often it is required. Laying new shingles over old hides the condition of the decking underneath, adds weight, and traps heat that shortens the life of the new roof. More importantly, a tear-off is the only way to see whether the sheathing is sound, and rotten decking under a brand new roof is a problem you have simply paid to cover up.
Most straightforward residential re-roofs are a short job measured in days rather than weeks, though it depends on the size of the roof, the pitch, how many layers come off, and what we find in the decking once it is exposed. Calgary weather is the other variable: we do not install through rain or in conditions where the shingles cannot seal properly, so a forecast can move a schedule.
We stop and show you before we replace anything. Damaged sheathing is the most common thing discovered after tear-off, because it is invisible until the old roof is off. It is handled as a documented addition to the work rather than something quietly absorbed or quietly billed, so you see what was found and what it takes to make it right.
Late spring through early fall gives the most reliable conditions, since asphalt shingles need warmth to seal properly and a hard frost interferes with that. Work happens outside that window when a roof cannot wait, using the methods appropriate for the conditions. The busiest period is right after a summer hail event, when demand across the whole city spikes at once.
Tell us roughly how old the roof is and what you are seeing. You’ll get a clear written quote.
Serving: Calgary, Airdrie, Cochrane, Okotoks, Chestermere. Flexible financing available.