Charlie:
Alan in uptown says he’s heard you say it’s preferable to use seven nails to secure shingles. This is to survive serious weather. Is that still true? Is there anything else he should know before he gets a re-roofing for his three story condo.
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Tom:
First off, it wasn’t seven nails. You used to have five nails per shingle, then the windstorm required six nails. Is it true for windstorm requirements and stuff? Yeah. More nails will hold it down under higher winds so they require that. Most roofers today, if they’re good, will put down the roofs to the specifications required to handle all the windstorms down here. If it gets to a point where these new shingles today are coming off, you either had a really bad roofer or they really got a bad product. Someone like Ideal Roofing, who is a GAF master league roofing contractor, they come in and say … You don’t tell them, “I want six or seven or eight nails.” They’re going to say, “This is what we do for your warranty under windstorm conditions.” GAF have already said how many nails, where the nails go, how much glue, what kind of underlayment. I can go on and on but there’s going to be a set of specifications that come along with this really incredibly good warranty. That’s what you’re looking for with a roofer. You don’t make it up, you don’t tell the roofer with to do.
He does not make it up. It is all specified in that particular warranty. With Ideal, I think they call it the silver pledge or something like that, but there’s a warranty that comes and they have to follow those directions exact.