Roof replacement
Roof Replacement in Fowlerville, Michigan
Fowlerville is two roofing towns sharing one ZIP code. Inside the village, the streets around Grand River carry National-style and Foursquare houses from the 1800s that have been roofed three and four times. Out in Handy, Conway and Iosco Townships, the 1990s and 2000s subdivisions and the farmhouses on two-acre parcels are coming up on their first full tear-off. We replace both — complete removal, a code-current Owens Corning system, and a registered warranty — and this page covers what each one involves.
Serving the Village of Fowlerville and the Handy, Conway and Iosco Township addresses that mail as Fowlerville — one exit west of our Howell yard.
What does a roof replacement look like on a Fowlerville home?
It depends on which side of the village line you are on. A house in the village core was likely built before the Second World War, and after eighty or a hundred years it has usually been re-roofed more than once — often with a layover. Michigan code does not permit another layer over two existing coverings, so those homes get a full tear-off to the deck, and the deck is frequently plank rather than plywood. A home in Red Cedar Crossing or Pinegate Village, or a ranch on acreage off Fleming or Chase Lake Road, was built in the 1990s or 2000s and is on its original builder-grade roof; that roof is now 20 to 30 years old, and the replacement is where drip edge, a full ice barrier and real attic ventilation get added for the first time. Either way it is a one-to-three-day job from our yard in Howell, one exit up I-96.
1800s–2026
Two centuries of housing inside one Fowlerville ZIP code
57
New single-family permits in Handy Township in 2023 — its busiest year since 2010
2
Maximum shingle layers before Michigan code requires a full tear-off
25 psf
Ground snow load a Livingston County roof is designed for
The village house on its third roof
The Fowlerville Historical Society's walking tour covers turn-of-the-century homes in Greek Revival, Italianate, Victorian, Carpenter Gothic, Craftsman Bungalow and Georgian Revival styles along Grand River, Grand Avenue, Second, Collins, Frank, Maple and Benjamin Streets. What those styles have in common, from a roofer's point of view, is steep pitch, cut-up geometry — dormers, cross gables, porch roofs tying into main roofs — and a very long history of being re-covered.
That history is the first thing we establish on a village estimate. A house that has been layered over once is legal to re-cover again only if the existing roof is sound and dry; a house with two layers already on it cannot legally take a third under the Michigan Residential Code. On homes this age we find two layers more often than not, and occasionally cedar shake still hiding under both. All of it comes off.
Underneath, the deck is often the original spaced or solid plank sheathing rather than plywood or OSB. Asphalt shingles need a solidly sheathed deck, so spaced boards get sheeted over with new panels before anything else goes on. Rafters sized for a lighter roof a century ago also get looked at while the deck is open — three layers of asphalt is a lot of weight to have been carrying through Michigan winters.
- Layer count confirmed before the estimate — two or more existing layers means full removal by law
- Spaced plank sheathing sheeted over with new panels where found
- Ice barrier to 24 inches inside the wall line, and 36 inches up the slope on any pitch of 8:12 or steeper
- Metal drip edge at every eave and rake — most village homes have never had it
- Every dormer, cross-gable valley and porch tie-in re-flashed with new metal and membrane
- Chimney step and counter flashing cut new; brick joints checked while we are there
- Owens Corning Duration or Duration Designer with starter at eaves and rakes and matching hip-and-ridge
Steep roofs, and what the code adds
Most of these village homes run 8:12 or steeper. At that pitch the code adds a second ice-barrier requirement: the membrane has to extend at least 36 inches up the slope from the eave as well as reaching 24 inches inside the exterior wall line. Steep roofs also change the work itself — staging, tie-off, and hand-carrying at the eaves — so a Victorian on Collins Street takes longer than a ranch of the same square footage, and it should.
Downtown Fowlerville has no historic district and no review board, so there is no approval step for shingle color or profile on a village house. The one paperwork item is the village's own permit, which is covered on our Fowlerville roof repair page along with the township offices and their hours.
Handy Township's first tear-off
The other Fowlerville is younger and it is arriving at replacement all at once. Red Cedar Crossing, the platted subdivision and site condominium about a mile south of I-96, is a mix of ranch and two-story homes running from around 2,000 to 4,600 square feet; Allen Edwin later added a Red Cedar Crossing West phase. Pinegate Village is a site condominium inside the village limits. Grandshire Estates is another named community. Beyond the subdivisions, the acreage stock — ranches on one and a half to two acres along Chase Lake and Fleming Roads, farmhouses on four and five rolling acres off Lange Road — went up steadily through the 1990s and 2000s.
Handy Township issued between four and fifty-seven single-family permits a year from 2010 through 2024, peaking at 57 in 2023, and Conway Township issued 92 over the same fifteen years. The much larger wave came before that, and those are the roofs due now.
What the first replacement corrects
A 1990s or 2000s Fowlerville roof was built to the code and the builder practice of its day. Drip edge at the rakes was not required in Michigan until the 2012 code cycle, so most of these homes have none. The ice barrier, where it exists, is a single 36-inch course that on a 12-inch overhang falls short of the 24 inches inside the wall line the current code requires. Ventilation is a couple of box vents and a gable vent at each end, over 7/16-inch OSB with H-clips, with insulation pushed against the sheathing at the eave.
Replacement is the moment all of that gets corrected. We add drip edge at every edge, run two courses of ice barrier, close the gable vents and cut a continuous ridge vent fed by real soffit intake with baffles in every rafter bay, and inspect every OSB panel for edge swelling once the old roof is off. That is the difference between new shingles on an old roof and a new roof.
Farmhouses and their outbuildings
Livingston County has 658 farms on nearly 86,000 acres, and Conway Township is one of the largest agricultural communities in the county. On a working farm or a hobby farm the house is rarely the only roof. Our Fowlerville roof repair page covers barns and pole barns as their own subject; on a replacement we simply plan the house and the outbuildings as one visit where the owner wants them done together, so the boom truck, the container and the crew make one trip down a long gravel drive instead of three.
Getting a roof to a Fowlerville address
Fowlerville is one I-96 exit west of our Howell yard on Sterling Drive — about ten minutes — which makes it one of the shortest hauls we make. What takes planning is the last mile. Iosco Township maintains 60 miles of public roads, many of which the township itself describes as retaining their original rural character, and Iosco and Coon Lake Roads are gravel. Conway and Handy have their share too. A loaded boom truck on a soft gravel road in March is a problem; the same truck in September is not.
Our default is boom-truck delivery that sets the bundles on the roof, which keeps the weight off the drive and any septic field. Where the drive or road will not take the truck we stage at the road and carry. The container goes on the driveway on plywood.
Inside the village
Village lots are narrow — a typical one is 66 feet wide — and a container that does not fit the drive has to go in the street. The Village of Fowlerville issues a specific permit for construction in streets and rights-of-way, and we obtain it before a roll-off is delivered rather than after a complaint. Neither the village nor Handy Township publishes a construction-hours rule that we could find, so we keep to a seven-to-six day out of ordinary courtesy.
Two dates matter downtown. The Fowlerville Family Fair — one of the oldest in Michigan, run by the Fowlerville Agricultural Society since 1886 — fills the fairgrounds at 8800 West Grand River for a week at the end of July and the start of August, and Grand River traffic through town changes accordingly. Christmas in the 'Ville closes downtown to traffic from noon and sends the lights parade down Grand River at six that evening. We schedule deliveries and tear-offs around both.
The September 2026 storm, from the Fowlerville side
The line that came through on the night of September 2, 2026 put an estimated 70 mph gust on Howell and a measured 67 mph at the Livingston County Airport, with straight-line winds of 60 to 70 mph across the county between about 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. The following afternoon a second cell prompted a tornado warning with Fowlerville as its starting point, moving southeast at 40 mph, and a five-foot-diameter tree was uprooted at Parkers Corners between Fowlerville and Howell. Fowlerville Fire Chief Bob Feig told WHMI that afternoon that the whole county was still going nuts, with trees and wires down everywhere. No tornado was confirmed in Livingston County; it was wind.
For a roof that was already in its replacement window, that storm is the reason to move this fall rather than next. Wind at that speed removes shingles that were already unsealed and breaks the seal on shingles that stay put and look fine from the yard. On an open township lot with nothing between the house and the field, the west and southwest elevations take the brunt. Have the roof walked, the tabs tested by hand, and the findings photographed with the date recorded.
Open country, and how we fasten for it
Fowlerville's townships are among the least dense in the county and the wind has a long run at a farmhouse on a section road. Owens Corning Duration shingles carry a 130 mph wind resistance limited warranty as standard and a 160 mph enhanced warranty when the full component set is installed with starter shingles at both the eaves and the rakes — and rake starter is exactly the detail an exposed gable end needs. Code requires a minimum of four fasteners per shingle; on exposed Fowlerville elevations we fasten to the manufacturer's high-wind pattern. Because shingles seal with a heat-activated strip that bonds in about a day in summer and can take up to twelve weeks on a north slope in winter, a roof finished by mid-October seals before the November gales.
The Owens Corning system we register in Fowlerville
On Top Roofing is an Owens Corning Platinum Preferred Contractor — the top tier of the Owens Corning contractor network in the company's own description, and the only tier that can offer its best system warranty. Every Fowlerville 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 coverage 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.
It requires the whole system — Duration shingles with SureNail Technology, Owens Corning or approved synthetic underlayment, Owens Corning hip-and-ridge, and Owens Corning self-adhered ice-and-water barrier, starter and VentSure balanced ventilation — plus new flashings and drip edge. We install all of it as standard, which is also what earns the 160 mph enhanced wind coverage.
Colors for a farmhouse and a Foursquare
Fowlerville's white farmhouses and pale-sided village homes take a darker roof well: Onyx Black, Estate Gray and Slatestone Gray are the colors we bring most often, with Driftwood and Teak for the brick-and-vinyl subdivision homes in Red Cedar Crossing. On a Victorian or an Italianate in the village, the Duration Designer line — Aged Copper, Storm Cloud, Black Sable — reads closer to the slate and shake those houses were built to carry. We bring full-size samples to the estimate.
New Fowlerville
Fowlerville is growing again. Allen Edwin's Silver Springs, a quarter mile from the school complex off Majestic Boulevard, opened its third phase in 2026 with more than thirty homesites ready to build. Red Cedar Crossing West added to the original subdivision. Handy Township's 2023 permit count was its highest in fifteen years. Fowlerville Community Schools enrolls about 2,400 students across nine townships and three counties, and the village and township together hold about 8,600 people.
We roof new construction in Fowlerville as well as its century-old stock, and a roof built to a Platinum Protection specification on day one is not having the third-layer conversation in 2060.
Fowlerville neighborhoods where we replace roofs
From our yard at 5896 Sterling Dr in Howell, Fowlerville is one exit west on I-96. We replace roofs across the village and the three townships that mail as Fowlerville — the pre-war streets around Grand River, the 1990s and 2000s subdivisions south of the freeway, the acreage homes and farmhouses along Fleming, Chase Lake, Lange and Nicholson Roads, and the new communities going in near the schools.
- Downtown Fowlerville
- Grand River Avenue
- North Collins Street
- South Second Street
- Frank Street
- Maple Street
- Benjamin Street
- Red Cedar Crossing
- Red Cedar Crossing West
- Pinegate Village
- Grandshire Estates
- Silver Springs
- Cedar River Estates
- Fleming Road
- Chase Lake Road
- Lange Road
- Allen Road
- Handy Township
- Conway Township
- Iosco Township
- Nicholson
- Parkers Corners
- Fowlerville Fairgrounds
- Webberville
Frequently asked questions
My village house is over a hundred years old. Can you just put another layer on?
My subdivision home was built around 2000. Is it really due?
Can you get a truck down my gravel road?
Where does the dumpster go on a 66-foot village lot?
My roof made it through the September 2026 storm. Do I still need it checked?
Do you replace the house roof and the barn roof at the same time?
What warranty comes with a Fowlerville roof replacement?
Is there a historic board I have to clear for a downtown house?
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