Roof Repair in Highland, Michigan

One building department, and permits for repairs as well as re-roofs

Highland Charter Township is the only government here. There is no city or village carved out of it, so unlike some of the townships around it, there is no question about which office a Highland address belongs to. Every 48356 and 48357 parcel is handled at 205 N. John Street, a block from the old Highland Station crossroads at Milford and Livingston Roads.

Highland Township lists roofing in both its re-shingling and remodel/repair permit categories, so we check with the township and pull a permit when the work calls for one. For an isolated repair — a cracked pipe boot, a run of lifted shingles, or a section of step flashing — the process is the same. Where a job starts as a repair and the deck tells a different story once we are up there, we have that conversation with you and, if the scope grows into a recover, handle the permit the same way we would on a full replacement.

Highland also carries a nuisance ordinance governing noise, so on any repair that runs into tear-off work on part of a roof, we agree start and finish times with you up front and keep the loud part of the job inside ordinary daytime hours. If your subdivision or association has its own rule on contractor hours, tell us and we work to it.

Chimney flashing and the older core around Highland Station

Around one house in five in Highland predates 1960, concentrated around the old Highland Station crossroads at Milford and Livingston Roads and scattered along the older lake shorelines. Those houses carry steeper pitches, plank decking instead of sheathing panels, and porch or addition roofs tied into the main roof at a shallower angle than the rest of the house.

A masonry chimney needs step flashing woven into each course of shingle on the sides and counter flashing let into the mortar joint above it, plus a cricket — a small saddle-shaped diverter — on the up-slope side to carry water around the chimney instead of letting it pond against the back wall. A missing cricket is one of the more reliable places to find a slow leak that has been quietly rotting a rafter tail for years before it shows on the ceiling below.

Dormers added in different decades, porch roofs at mismatched pitches, and valleys all add up to more flashing per square foot on these houses than on a newer subdivision roof. The field of the shingle is rarely the problem. It is frequently where two surfaces meet.

Ice dams on a Highland roof

Heat escaping an attic warms the underside of the deck and melts the snow sitting on the upper, warm part of a roof. That meltwater runs downhill until it reaches the eave and overhang — which sit outside the heated part of the house and stay cold — and refreezes there. The ice ridge grows with every cycle, the next round of meltwater pools behind it, and water gets pushed up underneath the shingle courses instead of shedding off the edge the way the roof was built to handle. It does not take much snow to start the cycle.

Michigan's residential code sets a floor for the fix built into the roof itself: ice barrier has to run from the lowest edge of the roof to at least 24 inches inside the exterior wall line, and the code applies the same 25 psf ground snow load to Highland that it applies across Oakland and Livingston Counties. On a house with deep overhangs, a low-slope section, or one that has already taken on water from an ice dam, we run that barrier further than the minimum — usually two full courses — because the code figure is a floor rather than the right answer for every roof.

On the 1970s cohort with gable-vent-only attics, the ice-dam risk is compounded by poor ventilation: a warm, poorly vented attic feeds the melt-refreeze cycle harder than a properly balanced one. Sealing the gable vents and running a continuous ridge vent with soffit baffles addresses the cause rather than just the damage, and it is worth doing at the same time as a repair rather than waiting for the next thaw to prove the point again.

One scheduling detail that matters here: the sealant strip on a new or repaired shingle is heat-activated, which can take much of a day to bond in July and up to twelve weeks on a shaded, north-facing slope in the cold. A repair made late in the fall on a shaded elevation can take up to twelve weeks to fully seal, which is a reason to have storm or wind damage looked at as soon as it is practical rather than letting it sit through a winter unsealed.

Storm checks, without overselling what Highland actually gets

After a wind event, we inspect and photograph what is actually there and give you a straight read on whether it is a repair, a partial section, or something larger. We do not claim hail damage in Highland where the record does not support it — no hail has been logged at Highland itself in recent years, and we would rather tell you that than sell you an inspection built around a storm that did not happen here.

Where a repair involves an insurance claim, our role is documentation: photographs, a written description of what failed and when, and a conversation with your adjuster about what we found on the roof. The claim and the relationship with your insurer stay yours. What changes the outcome is whether the damage is backed by evidence or by an opinion, and that is the part we handle. Our credentials behind it: Owens Corning Platinum Preferred, BBB A+ accredited, HAAG Certified inspectors, and the HAAG training in particular governs how we identify and document storm damage.