I would not worry about the neighbors house. But that is me. Shakes can be bunch more expensive than composition. Do you have an HOA? If so then you had better check with them before spending any money. My last home had a HOA and they were extremely anal about certain things. Best bet is call several licensed contractors and ask for bids based on what you want.
Cedar , more money, very flamable. Regular shingles won`t look as nice but there are options, metal, tile, slate , simulated slate, all will outlast cedar and maybe get you an insurance discount.
My roof is due for replacement and I'm wondering if I should stick with cedar shake (what it has now) or go for composition roofing. What are the pros and cons?
If I'm the only house with composition roofing in the same complex, how would that affect the resale price of my house and of my neighbor's house?
"peter" wrote in news:G%x6e.11920$9i7.8262@trnddc04:
If your home owners assoc. doesn't forbid the composition roof, then go with it. In my HOA composition roofing was forbidden until a fire broke out at a house, and 4 neighboring houses caught fire from the sparks hitting the cedar roofs.
My home owners insurance was going to increase after the fire unless I got a composition roof. Now, everyone in the HOA has a composition roof, or metal, or concreate, or tile. No one has a cedar roof.
It used to cost me about $300 per year for someone to climb up on the roof and replace split/missing shakes. Now I don't have that cost either.
You will probably have to increase your attic venting if you don't go with cedar, since most cedar roofs are not air tight, until it rains and the shakes swell up.
Just my thoughts.
Dave
Some HOA insurance companies will lower your rates if you go with 40 yr composiotion shingles. It is a good idea anyway.
Anyone even thinking about cedar should first check with their insurance agent. Many companies either insure cedar roofs or charge exhorbitant rates, especially in rural areas.
I really don't get the whole cedar shingle/shake bit at all. It is ancient technology that was used because there wasn't anything else available at the time. There are much better systems now that are a lot cheaper. The only positive about cedar is the look. Even the look can be achieved in other systems.
Harry K
Maybe not for you specifically, but certainly for some it will be (and can be a major cost differential). As in virtually everything, to generalize from a particular case is, in general, wrong... :)
I built a completely cedar home in 1973. It had cedar shakes on it. We put them on for durability and appearance. I put each shake on myself with two four inch long galvanized nails. 30 years later - I removed each shake and all of those long nails. It was a lot of work.
We replaced those shakes with fiberglass shingles that "supposedly look like cedar shingles." In my opinion they are not as pretty.
The insurance company did not charge me extra for having cedar shakes on my roof. They did not charge me less when I removed them.
See the cedar home at -
Cedar shakes and shingles are simply another choice you can make in this great country of America. If you are willing to pay for the look - go for it. But you can not get the look any other way. And insuring the roof is not a factor.
.....
I've facts...although I don't recall the number off hand and I'm not going to go look it up, the wood roof rider for this house is roughly 20% of the premium. When I was looking at the re-roof, I checked on what the reduction would be if converted to Class B or C--turns out it wasn't short enough time to pay back the differential in cost of the retrofit from an open-deck roofing system to make it worth it imo. But, anyway, the annual premium differential now is roughly $200/an. We're rural so that's part of it as well, of course. What it would be if we were inside the city fire coverage I can't say ottomh.
My point remains that to generalize that there is premium anywhere, is simply wrong. Whether you think 20% major or not I can't judge. I do know that some other rural areas in the vicinity that are even further removed from fire services are quite a bit more than we're paying although I don't have exact figures.
I have no idea where you are, but iirc, at one time there was a tremendous premium in some Houston suburbs where a great number of large houses were built almost eave-to-eave w/ cedar shake roofs. After a fire took out the original plus several more in the neighborhood from both direct spreading to neighboring roofs and even a few from wind-carried sparks/embers, there was a major revamping of requirements in several such communities.
It is better to cite examples - rather than to generalize off the top of your head without any facts at all to back it up :-)
30 years of buying insurance for a cedar shake roof home and not paying extra premium for it - certainly backs up my claim :-)Using fabled insurance cost as a reason not to use cedar shakes - is similar to someone not buying a Porsche because they can't afford it and blaming it on insurance. Yes - cedar shakes cost much more - because the materials are hard to mass produce and it takes a lot of labor to install them. But if you like cedar shakes - go for it - I can think of tons of worse ways to waste your money.
As someone once said - if you need excuses other than intrinsic values - to buy or not buy something - you should not buy it. And then everyone will have homes with white aluminum siding and asphalt roofs with tan Toyota Corolla's in the garage. :-)
Harry
On Tue, 12 Apr 2005 11:29:00 -0400, Harry Everhart scribbled this interesting note:
In some areas it is. Around here in North Central Texas, insurance companies do charge more to insure a house with cedar shingles as opposed to composition asphalt shingles. Why? Greater danger of fire and more expensive to replace. Since we sometimes tend to be high and dry during the summer months and because of the frequent springtime hail and thunder storms, both of these factors raise the insurance company's risk exposure when insuring a home with a cedar roof.
Just our experience and it may not apply everywhere.
-- John Willis (Remove the Primes before e-mailing me)
Harry Combustible wood roofing is forbidden by law in some portions of the country. In areas prone to wildland or interface fires there is a very steep difference in the cost of insurance for a home with a combustible roof. In many areas of the portion of the country that has a Mediterranean climate a home must have a roof with a class three or lower ignition resistance rating to be insured at a normal rate. Even a non combustible roofing that is unrated will cause the rate on home insurance to be markedly higher in western wildland urban interface zones. This is because the testing is conducted on roofing that is installed as designed and to past it must resist ignition of the underlying structure as well as the roofing itself. Your one roof is just too small a sample of the effect of roofing material on the insurability of a home.
-- Tom H
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