Free Upgrades – Blackstone Roofing

All of the following products are free upgrades for our insurance customers. Every one of them can be spec’d for cash deals at cost. For more information or a quote, feel free to contact us. The following list goes from the roof deck up:

Owens Corning® Weatherlock® Mat Self-Sealing Barrier

is their premium Ice & Water shield product. First and foremost, this product goes in the valleys and has a number of advantages over the product that it replaces: valley metal.

The issue with valley metal comes when you nail through the metal in order to secure the above shingles to the roof. The nail punctures the metal and is not sealed. Valleys are already one of the most leak prone areas on your roof, and these nail holes allow water ingress into your attic and your house.

Ice & Water shield is a massive upgrade to valley metal because it seals nails. Weatherlock Mat is a thick and durable peel-and-stick product that serves as the 3rd layer of protection and the last line of defense for water. It is the first product to go down onto the bare roof deck. It is also malleable, so it is used behind wall and chimney flashings, around skylights, and around pipe jacks and other protrusions.

Owens Corning® ProArmor® Synthetic Roof Underlayment

is Owens Corning’s synthetic felt product and replaces typical 15# or 30# organic felt. Organic felt is just a tar paper material that is easily torn, slippery for our crews, and not very water resistant. ProArmor is similar to a thick tarp, is almost impossible to tear, and has a nonskid coating for the safety of our crews. It goes over the entire roof surface undernath anywhere shingles will go. It is rated to protect your roof by itself for 30 days, and with the complete UV protection of Owens Corning shingles, it is covered by their Limited-Lifetime warranty.

Owens Corning® Starter Strip Plus

is the first layer of shingles that will go down. It goes around all of the edges of the roof (eaves and rakes, including on gables). Some contractors will use the shingles that they are already running and flip them over and nail the shingles over them. The problem with this is that the asphalt of the shingles will not allow a proper seal at the wind-lift prone edges where nails cannot be put. Using this non-approved method is a cheap-out that can also cause the shingles on your rake to curl over and look terrible. Not using approved starter can also be detrimental to your warranty.

Starter strip has an adhesive strip at the edge of the roof to lock down the first course and the sides of your shingles. Find yourself a roofing company who uses starter strip and all the manufacturers approved accessories, like Blackstone Roofing.

Owens Corning® TruDefinition® Duration® and TruDefinition® Duration® Designer

lines of shingles are available to homeowner at no additional cost at Blackstone Roofing. These shingles are Owens Corning’s top of the line Laminate Architectural Shingles. They are available in a large variety of colors from classy and understated to stand-out from the rest of the neighborhood.

One of the major selling points on this shingle is the SureNail strip. This woven fabric strip is inserted onto the shingle in the manufacturing process with an adhesive through high heat and pressure and serves three purposes not found anywhere else in the industry. First, is serves as a target for our crews to install the nails. They get going pretty quick with the pneumatic nail guns and this strip reduces the number of misses to almost zero. This strip gives the best visual target as well as the largest (3/4″) common bond zone where the nail can go through 3 layers of shingles. Next, this woven fabric strip resists wind from tearing the shingle by pulling it up and pulling the nail through the shingle. Finally, this woven fabric is where the tar strip on the backside of the shingle seals down onto. This gives a much greater resistance to wind lifting your shingles than typical tar strips that seal down onto the granules of the shingle. This is a massive technological advancement that isn’t found anywhere else in the Asphalt Roofing Industry. We at Blackstone Roofing are complete believers in this technology and believe it gives our customers a better product AND install every time we use it. For more information, watch the video, click on the picture, or give us a call.

The second major selling point of the Duration line of shingles is StreakGuard™ Algae Resistance Protection. Owens Corning’s Duration line of shingles come with a 10 year warranty against staining. This is due to their StreakGuard technology. Owens Corning blends copper-lined granules into their colorful ceramic-coated granules in order to protect against the all too common black algae staining you would typically see on the North-facing slope of some roofs.

Owens Corning® VentSure® 4-Foot Strip

ridge vent is a plastic, baffled ridge vent system that vastly outperforms box vents and competitor’s ridge vent systems.

Ridge vent itself is a massive ventilations improvement over conventional box vents. In addition to curb appeal, ridge vent has a performance increase over box vents. A 10 year old roof with box vents is going to show significantly more wear and age verses another 10 year old roof with ridge vent, ceteris paribus. The box vented roof will have a far lower cfm of outtake ventilation and the shingles will have been baked from the inside out, in effect.

Previous mesh and metal ridge vent designs had major issues and plastic baffled designs have come along to replace these outdated designs. Owens Corning’s VentSure is currently the best of these designs at keeping water, pine needles, and leaves and other debris out while allowing a free flow of hot air out.

Improper ventilation can prematurely age your shingles and void your warranty. VentSure Ridge vent will help your shingles last longer, and your Limited-Lifetime warranty in-tact.

Owens Corning® DuraRige® Hip and Ridge Cap Shingles

Blackstone Roofing gives customers proper hip and ridge cap shingles as opposed to other contractors who will cut the tabs off of 3 Tab shingles and use those. Proper hip and ridge cap shingles overlap each other by 50%. This makes them significantly more durable than using 3 Tab shingles with almost no overlap. Proper hip and ridge shingles keep your warranty intact whereas using 3 Tab on your hips and ridges takes your Limited-Lifetime warranty down to 2 years and your 130 mph wind-resistance warranty down to 60 mph.

Almost all contractors who do actually use the correct hip and ridge cap shingles use ProEdge. DuraRidge, has two distinct differences from ProEdge. The first difference is a prominent advantage: the SureNail® strip. This newly released shingle with the SureNail® strip gives this product a 130 mph warranty as opposed to 110 mph for ProEdge. The next difference is that DuraRidge gives your hips and ridges some depth and a bit of a dimensional look. It does not stand out like DecoRidge (found in “Optional Upgrades”), but it has more depth than ProEdge.