Roofing in Long Beach, CA 90808

Long Beach is a different roofing market from the rest of our service area, and the difference is age. Where Lakewood is almost entirely postwar tract, Long Beach housing runs from 1900s Craftsman bungalows through 1920s and 1930s Spanish Colonial Revival to the 1950s tract of the Plaza, Los Altos and El Dorado Park Estates neighborhoods. Each era has its own roof, its own failure pattern and its own correct repair.

The clay and concrete tile roofs across Belmont Heights, California Heights and Bluff Park generate most of our Long Beach calls, and almost none of them need what the homeowner initially asks for. The tile is usually fine. The felt underlayment beneath it is what has failed, typically at 25 to 30 years. A lift and relay, where the tile comes off by hand, new underlayment goes down and the original tile returns, costs far less than a new tile roof and is what these homes actually need.

Proximity to the water is the second factor. Marine air carries salt inland across the whole city, and it attacks fasteners, flashing and gutter systems long before it touches the roof covering itself. We specify coated flashing and corrosion-rated fasteners as standard on Long Beach work rather than treating it as an upgrade, and we avoid mixing dissimilar metals at valleys and edges where galvanic corrosion does its damage quietly.

The eastern neighborhoods around El Dorado Park, bordering Lakewood along Studebaker and Palo Verde, are the exception. That housing is 1950s tract on the same pattern as ours, with the same low-pitch gables, the same gable-vent-only attics and the same shingle-heavy roofscape, and it gets the same approach we use across Lakewood.