Roof replacement
Roof Replacement in Dexter, Michigan
Dexter is the clearest first-re-roof town we work in. More than half the houses inside the city went up between 1990 and 2009, and the subdivisions everyone names — Huron Farms in 2000 and 2001, Dexter Crossing through the 1990s, Westridge from 1997 onward — are all reaching the end of the only roof they have ever had at roughly the same time. Around that sits a pre-1940 village core near Baker, Central and Dexter-Ann Arbor, a 1970s township cohort on a second covering, and the cottages of the Huron chain. Add the March 2012 EF3 tornado, whose replacement roofs are now fourteen years old, and Dexter has more roofs arriving at the same decision point than almost anywhere else in Washtenaw County.
Serving the City of Dexter and Dexter Township in Washtenaw County, plus the Webster and Scio Township addresses that mail as Dexter.
Who issues the permit for a roof replacement in Dexter?
A Dexter address can sit in four different governments, but they share one building office. Building permits for the City of Dexter, Webster Township and Scio Township are all issued by Washtenaw County Building Inspection at 705 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48103, on (734) 222-3900, with its own inspections line. Dexter Township has no building department of its own — its departments are the assessor, clerk and treasurer, and its brochure routes permits through its Director of Planning and Zoning — so we confirm the county arrangement for a township parcel by phone before the job is booked rather than assume it. Whether the county requires a building permit for a like-for-like re-roof is the part nobody should state flatly: the county's permit pages and application do not list re-roofing among the work types, so we ask the county directly for your address and put the answer in your written estimate. There is also a local layer on top of the county one. Dexter Township's welcome brochure asks for a minor zoning permit for roofing, alongside siding and windows, through its planning and zoning office. The City of Dexter requires preliminary zoning compliance from its Office of Community Development before a county building permit, though whether that step applies to a re-roof specifically is not something the city publishes. Scio Township requires zoning compliance for anything needing a county building permit. We handle all of that; you do not make those calls.
1997
Median year built inside the City of Dexter — the first-tear-off generation
51.4%
Of city homes built 1990–2009, reaching the end of a first roof now
EF3
The March 15, 2012 tornado: 135–140 mph, a 7.57-mile path through Dexter
680 acres
Portage Lake, the largest on the Huron River chain of lakes
Four jurisdictions, one county building office
The City of Dexter has only been a city since November 20, 2014, after years as a village working its way through the change. Around it, Dexter Township holds the lakes to the north and west, Webster Township the northeast, and Scio Township the southeast toward Ann Arbor. All of them mail as Dexter, and all of them route building permits to the same county counter on Zeeb Road.
That is convenient but it is not the whole picture, because the zoning layer stays local. A township parcel can need a minor zoning permit from Dexter Township even where the county paperwork is straightforward; a city parcel goes through the city's community development office first; a Scio parcel needs zoning compliance from the township for anything the county permits. We work out which combination applies to your parcel at the estimate visit, make the calls, and write the answer into the estimate so you are not the one on hold.
| City of Dexter | Dexter Township | |
|---|---|---|
| Population | 4,521 | 6,634 |
| Housing units | 1,864 | 2,860 |
| Median year built | 1997 | 1984 |
| Built 2010 or later | 13.0% | 6.6% |
| Built 2000–2009 | 32.1% | 20.7% |
| Built 1990–1999 | 19.3% | 18.4% |
| Built 1970–1979 | 2.9% | 18.7% |
| Built before 1940 | 16.8% | 6.9% |
| Owner-occupied | 77.2% | 96.1% |
| Single-family detached | 56.5% | 97.4% |
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2020–2024 five-year estimates. The city also runs 17.9% attached single-family — a lot of townhouse and condominium product along Dexter-Ann Arbor Road.
Inspections, code and snow load
The county asks for at least 24 hours' notice on an inspection. Which inspections a roof specifically draws — an ice-barrier or mid-roof look as well as a final — is not published in a form we will state as fact, so we confirm the sequence when the permit is issued. The county enforces the State Construction Code, and statewide the 2015 Michigan Residential Code remains in effect: the 2021-based update that had been scheduled for August 2025 is paused under a Michigan Court of Claims order.
Ground snow load is one more thing we check rather than quote. Michigan's table puts Washtenaw County at 25 psf with an exception list of jurisdictions at 20 psf, and we confirm which figure applies to your address from the table before anything structural is specified. For an ordinary asphalt re-roof over sound framing it rarely changes the job, but it is the sort of number that should be right rather than approximately right.
The first-re-roof town: Huron Farms, Dexter Crossing and Westridge
Half the City of Dexter — 51.4 percent — was built between 1990 and 2009, with almost a third of the whole city in the 2000s alone. The city has more than doubled in population since 1990, and it did it in subdivisions. Almost nothing here dates from 1960 to 1989; the city skipped that generation entirely. The result is that an unusually large share of Dexter houses are all reaching the same milestone in the same few years.
Huron Farms is the clearest case: 268 homes on and around Noble Drive, built in 2000 and 2001, 1,500 to 2,500 square feet with basements on lots under a third of an acre, with an annual association. Dexter Crossing is the big 1990s subdivision beside the shopping centre — ranches and two-stories from roughly 1,300 to 2,100 square feet, with an association, playground and trails. Westridge of Dexter, off Island Lake Road and Dexter-Pinckney Road on the edge of Hudson Mills Metropark, mixes newer homes from 1997 through 2014 with 1952 to 1958 ranches on the same streets, with an association, a neighbourhood lake and trails. Arlington Woods rounds out the list of names people actually use.
What is on all of those roofs is the same specification: builder-grade three-tab or early architectural shingles over 7/16-inch OSB, box vents rather than a continuous ridge, one course of ice barrier at best, and no drip edge at the rakes, because Michigan did not require drip edge at both eaves and rakes until 2012. Seventeen to thirty-five years is the honest life of that assembly here. A replacement is the single opportunity to correct every one of those original shortcuts, because the deck is open exactly once: drip edge at eaves and rakes, ice barrier running from the eave to at least twenty-four inches inside the exterior wall line, gable and box vents replaced by a continuous ridge fed by real soffit intake with a baffle in every rafter bay, new pipe boots, step flashing and counterflashing rather than reused, and every sheet of OSB checked for swollen edges and delamination with the shingles off.
The old village: 16.8% of the city predates 1940
Dexter was settled in 1824 by Samuel W. Dexter where Mill Creek meets the Huron River, and platted in 1830. Almost seventeen percent of the city's housing still predates 1940, concentrated along the original corridors — Baker Road, Central Street and Dexter-Ann Arbor Road — with Gordon Hall, the early-1840s Greek Revival listed on the National Register in 1972, at the edge of town and the Dexter Cider Mill on Central Street operating since 1886.
Those houses roof differently: steeper pitches, plank decks rather than sheathing panels, porch and addition roofs low enough to need double underlayment between 2:12 and 4:12 or a membrane below that, and usually a stack of coverings already at Michigan's two-layer limit. Full removal is the point of the exercise — you cannot sheet over a split plank you cannot see. Gordon Hall is a National Register listing, and whether the city applies any local design review to a roof in the old core is a question for the city. If your house is in that core, we ask before the job is booked.
Townships, lake cottages and the 1970s cohort
Dexter Township reads differently from the city: 96.1 percent owner-occupied, 97.4 percent single-family detached, a median year built of 1984, and a big 1970s group at 18.7 percent sitting alongside a 39 percent 1990s-and-2000s acreage-subdivision wave. Roughly 28 percent of township housing predates 1970, much of it lake cottages on the chain.
The 1970s and older township houses are the ones on a second or third covering, and the recurring findings are consistent: a layover hiding soft decking, an attic vented by two gable louvers, bath fans dumping into the attic rather than through the roof, and valleys worn through at the centre. On most of them a tear-off is not a preference but the only legal option, because the code prohibits re-covering over two or more layers or over a deteriorated deck. Neighbourhood names around the township and the city run long — Brass Creek, Carriage Hills, Cobblestone Estates, Island Hills Estates, Mystic Ridge, Pineview, Portage Lake Resort, Walsh Farms, Webster Hills, Castleton Farms, Cedar Hills, Copper Meadows, Deer Run, Dunlavy Estates, Fox Ridge, Glen Devon, Harbor Trail, Loch Alpine, Orchard River Hills, Preserve of Dexter, Quail Ridge, Stoneyfield Meadows, Thornton Farms and Horseshoe Bend among them. We read your parcel and your association's guidelines rather than guess the age of your house from a street name.
The March 15, 2012 tornado, and the roofs it left behind
Dexter is one of the few towns in Greater Southeast Michigan where a single afternoon still defines the roofing conversation. On March 15, 2012 an EF3 tornado with peak winds of 135 to 140 mph tracked 7.57 miles across the Dexter area, up to 800 yards wide, on the ground from 5:18 to 5:56 p.m.
The National Weather Service survey describes the path in detail. It touched down northeast of North Territorial Road and Dexter Townhall Road at EF1 strength, causing minor roof damage. It strengthened through Horseshoe Bend subdivision at around 120 mph with exterior structural damage, reached EF3 along Dexter-Pinckney Road at 5:31 p.m. and destroyed a home northwest of Dexter, paralleled Huron River Drive with EF2 damage on the north side of town, then struck EF3 again at 5:49 p.m. in Huron Farms — one home destroyed and another left with only its interior rooms standing — before lifting near Zeeb Road and Ann Arbor-Dexter Road. NOAA recorded 20 homes severely damaged and some damage to at least 200. The county road commission hauled roughly 6,000 cubic yards of chips out of the right of way over six weeks. Nobody was injured.
Here is why that is a roofing fact and not just local history. Huron Farms was built in 2000 and 2001, so the tornado hit roofs that were about eleven years old. A great many of them were replaced in 2012 — and those replacement roofs are now about fourteen years old themselves, in a subdivision where the original 2000-and-2001 roofs that were not replaced are twenty-five or twenty-six. Two ages of roof on the same street, both worth a look, for different reasons.
If your roof was replaced after the 2012 storm, the useful question at an inspection is what specification it was replaced to. Storm-period work varies enormously: some of those roofs went on as complete systems with new flashings and corrected ventilation, and some went on fast as a shingle swap over whatever was underneath. We can usually tell which from the attic and the eave detail, and we tell you which one you have in writing.
Hail, wind and the Huron River canopy
Unlike the towns north of us, Dexter genuinely does get hail. That changes how an inspection here should be done, and it is why our HAAG Certified inspectors matter more on this page than on most.
| Date | Location | Event | What was recorded |
|---|---|---|---|
| March 14, 2019 | Dexter | 1.00 inch hail | One-inch stones in town |
| June 12, 2021 | Dexter | 1.00 inch hail | One-inch stones in town |
| June 15, 2023 | Dexter and around | 1.00 inch hail at Dexter | 1.25 inch at Hudson Mills, 1.75 inch at Delhi Mills, 1.50 inch at Pinckney the same day; 56 mph at Hudson Mills with large oaks and maples down |
| July 11, 2023 | Lyndon Center | 59 mph thunderstorm wind | Trees onto houses; a pontoon flipped on Halfmoon Lake |
| July 26, 2023 | Scio Township | 56 mph thunderstorm wind | A tree onto a house trapping an occupant |
| August 27, 2024 | Scio and around Dexter | 56 mph thunderstorm wind | Trees down especially over Scio Township, some onto houses; Dexter gauges measured 2.57 to 3.14 inches of rain |
| April 15, 2026 | Ann Arbor and 2 S Dexter | EF1 tornado at Ann Arbor, 110 mph | Roof loss at a school building; a tree down on Parker Road south of Dexter the same night |
| July 3, 2026 | Dexter | Damaging wind | Multiple trees on the roadway around Mast Road and Joy Road at 5:38 p.m. |
| September 3, 2026 | 3 W Hudson Mills | Damaging wind | Trees and power lines down at 3:30 p.m. as the September 2–3 storm crossed the area |
Sources: NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database; National Weather Service Detroit/Pontiac event summaries. Wind speeds are National Weather Service estimates unless noted as measured.
What a hail inspection should actually look like
One-inch hail does not usually make a roof leak the same week. What it does is bruise the mat — a soft spot where the granules are knocked clear and the asphalt below is fractured — and those bruises turn into failures over the following years as the exposed asphalt weathers. From the ground it is invisible, which is exactly why hail is the damage type most often both missed by homeowners and overstated by door-knockers.
A HAAG Certified inspection is a defined method for telling real hail bruising apart from blistering, mechanical damage and ordinary granule loss, on a test square rather than an impression. That is the standard our inspectors are trained to, and it cuts both ways: we will tell you when what you are looking at is manufacturing blistering or foot traffic and not a storm claim at all. On a Dexter roof, with three separate one-inch hail dates since 2019, it is worth having someone look properly once.
Wind, water and trees
The wind record here is almost entirely trees — oaks and maples along Huron River Drive and around the lakes, coming down onto roofs and roads. That heavy canopy also keeps north slopes damp, which grows moss and algae; Owens Corning hip and ridge brings 25-year algae resistance with the system warranty. Owens Corning Duration shingles carry 130 mph wind resistance as standard and 160 mph enhanced when the full component set goes on with starter shingles at both the eaves and the rakes, and on exposed lake frontage we fasten to the manufacturer's high-wind pattern rather than the four-nail code minimum.
August 27, 2024 is worth remembering for a different reason: Dexter gauges measured between 2.57 and 3.14 inches of rain in that event. Rain at that rate finds every short ice barrier, every reused pipe boot and every valley that was woven rather than lined. Quite a lot of what people describe to us as a wind leak turns out to have been a volume-of-water leak through a detail that was never right.
Portage, Silver and the Huron chain
Dexter Township is 8.5 percent water. Lakes wholly inside it include Crooked, Pickerel, Losee, Little Portage, West, Riker and Dead; partly inside are Halfmoon, Hi-Land, Silver, Portage, Four Mile and North Lake. Portage Lake — Big Portage — is 680 acres and 84 feet deep, the largest lake on the Huron River chain. Silver Lake runs 152 acres and 42 feet at its deepest, all-sports, about a third of it inside the Pinckney State Recreation Area and straddling the Washtenaw–Livingston line, with housing that runs from 900-square-foot ranches to a 1920s home expanded to 2,900 square feet on 50 to 100 foot frontages. Hi-Land Lake is the largest inside the park. The Huron River itself runs along the township's eastern edge and through the city, where Mill Creek joins it, with Hudson Mills Metropark's 1,549 acres at the North Territorial crossing and the Border-to-Border Trail linking it to Dexter-Huron.
For roofs that means two things. Open fetch across 680 acres of Portage puts real load on a water-facing slope, so that elevation gets rake starter and the high-wind fastening pattern. And a shoreline of 1920s to 1950s cottages that became year-round houses means roofs assembled in stages: steep main roofs with low-slope additions tacked on, three or four planes meeting at angles nobody designed, dead valleys holding water and leaves, and minimal attic ventilation over the added-on sections, which is where the ice dams form. A replacement is the chance to reconcile all of it — membrane below 2:12, double underlayment from 2:12 to 4:12, crickets in the dead valleys, and ventilation built as a balanced system rather than a few holes. On a plank-decked cottage the true condition of the sheathing is not knowable until the tear-off, so we set out in the written estimate exactly how deck replacement is handled if we find it.
Working in Dexter: access, associations and the calendar
From our yard at 5896 Sterling Drive in Howell, Dexter is about 35 minutes south — down D-19 through Pinckney and across on Dexter-Pinckney Road, or US-23 to North Territorial. We are honest about being a Howell company rather than a Dexter one, and it matters less than it sounds: these are the same crews that work Pinckney and Hamburg every week, on the same chain of lakes, and Dexter-Pinckney Road is the road between the two.
Most Dexter subdivisions have an association, and several of them approve exterior work. We read your guidelines before the estimate is written and give the association the manufacturer's product sheet, the exact colour and a sample board — the real material, not a photograph — then build the approval time into the schedule rather than discovering it the week of the tear-off. In the city, lots in Huron Farms and the condominium rows along Dexter-Ann Arbor Road are tight, so container placement and truck access get settled before the schedule is set, and the container goes on the driveway on plywood rather than on turf.
Downtown, Main Street, Baker Road and Central Street carry events through the summer — the Dexter Summer Festival takes over the first weekend of August — and the city posts road closures for them. If your house is in the old core we schedule around that calendar and confirm where a container can sit before the first truck arrives. New building continues in town, too: the city council approved Kentwood Place, sixteen units in five buildings on a three-quarter-acre site northwest of Baker and Fourth in the downtown district, in April 2025. We roof new construction and additions as well as replacements, and a roof built to a Platinum Protection specification from day one is a roof that is not having the two-layer conversation forty years from now.
The Owens Corning system we register in Dexter
On Top Roofing is an Owens Corning Platinum Preferred Contractor — the top tier of the Owens Corning contractor network in the company's own words, and the only tier that can register its best system warranty. Every Dexter replacement is registered under a Platinum Protection Roofing Limited Warranty: limited lifetime coverage on materials with a 50-year non-prorated period, limited lifetime workmanship non-prorated for the first 25 years, 130 mph wind resistance as standard and 160 mph enhanced, and 25-year algae resistance with Owens Corning hip and ridge. It transfers once to a buyer within 60 days of a sale.
The warranty requires the whole system rather than the shingle alone: Duration shingles with SureNail Technology, Owens Corning or approved synthetic underlayment, Owens Corning hip and ridge, Owens Corning self-adhered ice and water barrier, starter at the eaves and the rakes, and VentSure balanced ventilation — plus new flashings and new drip edge throughout. We install all of it as standard, in the city, in Dexter Township, and on the Webster and Scio sides alike. Our credentials behind it: Owens Corning Platinum Preferred, BBB A+ accredited, HAAG Certified inspectors.
Impact-rated shingles in a hail town
Dexter's hail record is the reason Duration FLEX comes up more often here than anywhere else we work. It is an SBS polymer-modified shingle with a UL 2218 Class 4 impact rating — the top class — which means it is built to take an impact that would bruise a standard mat. We are not going to tell you every Dexter house needs it. What we will do is put it on the estimate as an option alongside standard Duration and explain the difference in plain terms so the decision is yours and informed.
Colours for Dexter houses
On the pre-1940 houses along Baker, Central and Dexter-Ann Arbor, the Duration Designer line — Aged Copper, Storm Cloud, Black Sable — reads closest to the slate those roofs were built to imitate. The 1990s and 2000s subdivisions in Huron Farms, Dexter Crossing and Westridge sit well under Driftwood, Teak, Brownwood or Estate Gray, and in an association street it is worth looking at what the neighbours have before choosing. On lake homes with cedar or stained siding, Sand Dune and Aged Copper. We bring full-size samples to the estimate and look at them against your siding, in daylight, at the house — and the same sample goes to your association when one has to approve the choice.
Storm damage, insurance and what we will and will not claim
After a hail or wind event in Dexter we inspect on the roof, not from the driveway: test squares for hail bruising, the windward slope for lifted and creased tabs, the ridge vent, the flashings and the valleys, and the attic for what the water has actually been doing. We photograph everything and put the findings in writing, including the dates of the storms we are relating them to.
Where an insurance claim is involved, we document the damage thoroughly, provide the photographs and the written scope, and talk to your adjuster about what we found on the roof. We do not file the claim for you and we do not represent you against your insurer — that is your relationship with your carrier. What we will do is make sure the adjuster sees what we saw, with dates and photographs attached. Our inspectors are HAAG Certified, which is the credential that governs how storm damage is identified and documented.
Dexter neighborhoods where we replace roofs
From our yard at 5896 Sterling Dr in Howell, Dexter is about 35 minutes south through Pinckney. We replace roofs across the City of Dexter, Dexter Township and the Webster and Scio sides — the 1990s and 2000s subdivisions that make up half the city, the pre-1940 houses along Baker and Central, the acreage homes north of town, and the cottages and year-round houses on Portage, Silver, Halfmoon and North Lake.
- Downtown Dexter
- Main Street
- Baker Road
- Central Street
- Dexter-Ann Arbor Road
- Huron River Drive
- Dexter-Pinckney Road
- North Territorial Road
- Island Lake Road
- Mast Road
- Joy Road
- Huron Farms
- Dexter Crossing
- Westridge of Dexter
- Arlington Woods
- Horseshoe Bend
- Brass Creek
- Carriage Hills
- Cobblestone Estates
- Island Hills Estates
- Mystic Ridge
- Pineview
- Portage Lake Resort
- Walsh Farms
- Webster Hills
- Castleton Farms
- Cedar Hills
- Copper Meadows
- Deer Run
- Dunlavy Estates
- Fox Ridge
- Glen Devon
- Harbor Trail
- Loch Alpine
- Orchard River Hills
- Preserve of Dexter
- Quail Ridge of Dexter
- Stoneyfield Meadows
- Thornton Farms
- Portage Lake
- Little Portage Lake
- Silver Lake
- Halfmoon Lake
- North Lake
- Hi-Land Lake
- Four Mile Lake
- Crooked Lake
- Hudson Mills Metropark
- Dexter-Huron Metropark
- Pinckney State Recreation Area
- Gordon Hall
- Dexter Township
- Webster Township
- Scio Township
Frequently asked questions
Who issues the permit for a roof replacement in Dexter?
Is there a township permit as well as a county one?
My house is in Huron Farms and the roof was replaced after the 2012 tornado. Should I be thinking about it again?
Is Dexter a hail town?
My house was built in 2001 and the roof still looks fine from the street. Is it time?
Can you go over the existing shingles instead of tearing off?
Does a house in the old part of Dexter need historic approval?
What snow load do you build to in Dexter?
Can you get equipment to a lake house on Portage or Silver?
What warranty comes with a Dexter roof replacement?
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