Roof Cleaning Questions & Answers
1) What are the reasons to remove moss from the roof?
Answers:
1. Because it can root itself in to the structure and deteriorate your roof. Watch the show life after people, it shows how moss and lykin are the first organisms that start to break down our structures.
2. You may be selling your house and you want it to look nice. A roof cleaning job done right can bring the roof back to looking brand new.
3. Your insurance requires that you do it.
4. So that your neighbors do not have to look at all that moss on your roof and they will know that you are good at maintenance. Piece of mind.
2) What should I look for when getting my 3 bids for my roof cleaning or roof maintenance job?
Answer: Good Question!
1. Make sure the person or company is licensed with the CCB. The Oregon Contractors Board makes it really easy to check. All you have to do is go to this page, http://www.oregon.gov/CCB/ and type in the contractors CCB# where it says contractor search. It will let you know if they are active or not. Plain and simple, if you hire someone who is not licensed, you take all the responsibility. If they get hurt, there is a good chance you will lose more than just your house. CCB#’s require, that’s right REQUIRE, 1 million in liability and an insurance bond, for more than just your piece of mind.
2. As a roof cleaner or a roof cleaning company, one must be licensed by the Oregon Department of Agriculture if any kind of treatment application is applied. It does not matter what it is, even if its just hand soap that they claim to kill moss, they would still need the license. A good phone # for the DOA to check a license is 503-986-4550.
3. If they have employees, they will need to show workers compensation on their employees. If they are operating as a sole proprietor and have no help, then they would not need to have workers compensation.
3) What is the fee for roof cleaning?
I bid at around 65.00/hr plus the cost of treatment with a minimum of 350.00 for moss removal, gutter cleaning and treatment. Steeper roofs are a bit more expensive to work on for obvious reasons. I will give you an exact quote for your roof cleaning job.
4) What is your methodology? Green?
Our method is a combination of brushing/low psi pressure washing technique. Sometimes we will brush the entire roof and sometimes we will use low psi washing. Whichever is best for the shingles and depending on which type of moss that you have. Yes I have heard to that pressure washing is bad for the roof, but if someone knows what they are doing and has had lots and lots of experience like I have, it is fine. Any knuckle head could mess up a roof with just about anything. If you are absolutely sure you want us only using brushes, that’s fine.
Green for sure, which is why I do not go out to look at some of the jobs. It saves on gas and air pollution and they are always around the same price. Unless of course I need to come out and look at it in order to help me get the job or if the roof is not on maps or if the picture doesn’t display what I need to see. I have been doing this for 10 plus years, all jobs are around the same price. I will be able to look at your house from google maps, zillow and earth and will ask you a few questions. From there, I can formulate an accurate bid. Wet and Forget is much safer and more effective then zinc.
5) Is gutter cleaning included?
Yes!
6) What about the debris that comes off the roof?
We clean all hard surfaces, if you want you can leave your yard debris can out for piles of moss. We go around the house with the air blower, pressure washer and broom when we are done and will leave it cleaner then when we got there.
7) How long do you guarantee moss not to return?
I do not guarantee a specific time for Oregon moss not to return. Companies that do that are crazy, usually the start ups do that because they don’t know. I have been doing this for 10 years and I still have no crystal ball. I would say that if you treat your roof every year you should be good, some houses take 2 a year but that’s rare. The key is to keep an eye on your roof and stay ahead of the problem. If you see green, let me know and I will treat it before it turns to moss.
FYI: All products work about the same and wash off of the roof at about the same time, so it really doesn’t matter what you use as long as it is a registered moss and algae killer. There are products that can be harmful to your roof so please consult a professional and do some research.
Some of our downspouts drain directly into our yard, where we grow tomatoes and strawberries. Does the Wet & Forget label specifically say it’s OK to be on food producing soil?
Answer: To be very honest, I used to use zinc sulfate and I had one occurrence where the home owner said that a small patch of his grass died where the gutter downspout drained directly onto the lawn. I have not seen grass or plant life be effected by Wet and Forget and have treated thousands of roofs. We keep the sprayer close to the roof, do it on non windy days and use the proper sprayers and conditions. The following years are going to give you the most bang for your buck, preventative maintenance treatments. I have never seen Wet and Forget kill any kind of plant life but just to be on the safe side we can use the worry free by Lilly miller. It is made up of vinegar and citric acid, it only works when we can use a lot so you are looking at 3 times the amount of product to treat the roof. The cost of the treatment will triple as it is more expensive and will require a lot more of it for it to work properly.
9) There are screens on our gutters which are very important for Autumn. Can your cleaning process avoid disturbing the gutter screens?
Answer: The gutter screens we can easily work around. I will not take them out, clean the gutters then put them back in. Unless of course you want to pay for it, as that is not included in the bid. I will however, clean the debris from the tops of the screens. Removing screens, cleaning the gutters out, then reinstalling them is a job all by itself or separate job. If we have to do that, the gutter system that you have is not working properly and should be taken off.
10) what is your availability to work?
We stay about a week to two weeks booked out. It helps if you can call me to schedule your roof cleaning job instead of email because the problem with email is that by the time we reply to each other, the day that we wanted is already booked up.
11) Why do you say free estimates on your site for roof cleaning but you charge for some of your roof leak estimates?
Some leak estimates are free and some are not. If it is plainly obvious, what the cause of the leak is from the external roof, then yes the roof leak estimate is free. The problem with bidding leaks is that sometimes I put in a few hours of work just to find the leak, then I find it, and you pass the info to someone else who can beat my price because they didn’t have to do all the work to find the leak. It happened to me the other day where I put in an hour to find that he needed 70 feet of valley metal and he never called me back, so maybe he called around for the cheapest company to do the valley metal.
I would like a chance to talk to you and maybe we could figure out a bid over the phone based on what you know is going on. I will give a more detailed free bid, but I wont come out and put in free work, to figure out the leak. We have a 100% success rate with fixing leaks We bill for work that we do and or fixing leak hazards. All work is guaranteed and photos will be sent to your email to prove that we did the work.
I am an honest contractor and want you to understand that a free bid for roof cleaning is a lot easier then bidding for a roof leak. Roof leaks are tough, because we could come out and fix some problems that we see on the roof, but the roof still leaks. We would then need to do more work and fix more problems. We could eventually do a whole tear off of the side that the leak is on, lay down some ice and water shield, tar paper and new shingles. That is the worst case scenario, and my philosophy is to start out small and or cheap for you. But I’m not going to buy your problem, and we will need to charge for whatever work we end up doing. Most of the time, the leaks are obvious and we are able to fix them the first try, but sometimes it takes 3 or 4 trips out. Some leaks can be very tricky.
I just want to be as honest as possible and if you called me to talk about my methods and ethics with roof leaks then you would know that my intentions are good. Thanks for your time.
