Erie Premium Roofing: Replacement, Repair & Storm Work
Residential and commercial roofing done to a written record. Free inspections across Erie County.
- Registered Pennsylvania home improvement contractor, number on every estimate
- A written framing and layer record with every roof we open
- Free inspection, and we photograph what sits under the shingle too
- Written workmanship warranty, with the manufacturer paperwork registered for you
Our Roofing Services in Erie, PA
Roof Replacement
A replacement here is decided by what comes off, not by what goes on. Erie's median house dates to 1947, and until the old covering is lifted nobody knows how many layers are up there or what the boards underneath look like.
Roof Leak Repair
A leak in a 1920s Erie house travels farther than a leak in a new one, and that changes how the diagnosis has to be done. Water does not drop where it entered.
Storm Damage Roof Restoration
Erie storms are not local events. When a band sets up off the lake it covers most of a county at once, which means every roof that was going to fail fails inside the same seventy-two hours, and the whole market queues at the same time.
Hail Damage Roof Repair
Erie is not a hail market, and a page that pretends otherwise is selling something. Hail reaches this county occasionally in a summer line, not annually and not at plains sizes, which means the majority of what gets reported as hail damage around here is simple age.
Wind Damage Roof Repair
Wind reaches this city across open water with nothing in its path, so it arrives steady rather than gusty and it works the same planes every winter. On old Erie houses the failure is almost always below the shingle, in wood that gave up holding fasteners decades ago.
Roof Inspections
We will not sell you a roof certification. Nobody in this county can honestly certify what a roof is rated to carry, and a letter implying otherwise is worth what the paper cost.
Asphalt Shingle Roofs
Practically every pitched roof in this county wears asphalt, so the question worth asking is not whether to use it. It is which laminate, over what kind of deck, and whether the coverage you are being promised will hold up when somebody actually tries to use it.
Metal Roofing
Metal suits the roofs in this city better than it suits most housing stock. They are steep, they are tall, and a panel that clears itself all winter is worth real money.
Tile Roofing
On this page we mostly say no, and the reason is arithmetic rather than taste. Tile is scarce in Erie County, and on houses that were never framed to carry it, it should stay scarce.
Flat & Low-Slope Roofing
Almost no Erie house has a flat roof. Almost every Erie house has a flat piece of roof, and it is usually the piece nobody can see, nobody wrote down, and everybody has patched at least twice already.
Roof Coatings & Sealing
We refuse one version of this job outright, and we refuse it often enough that it belongs at the top of the page. Nobody should be painting a coating onto worn-out asphalt shingles, and anyone selling you that is selling you a delay.
Roof Ventilation
A great many Erie houses cannot be ventilated the way the textbook describes, and pretending otherwise is how somebody ends up paying for a ridge vent that makes things worse. The limit here is the building, not the budget.
Skylights
This is the only roofing job in the City of Erie that comes with an inspector attached, and that changes both the price and the schedule. It is worth knowing before anybody quotes you a number.
Gutters & Downspouts
A gutter in Erie is not a rain product. For four or five months a year it is a bracket holding a wet slab of snow that has just come off a steep plane above it, and almost every failure we see traces back to that.
Fascia & Soffit
On most houses here this is carpentry, not trim replacement, and the price reflects that. A boxed cornice is a built assembly with lookouts, a plancier and a frieze, rather than one board screwed across the rafter tails.
Chimney Flashing
Erie brick takes a beating that inland masonry does not, and the roof line is where you find out. Most of what gets diagnosed here as a chimney leak turns out to be two separate problems stacked on one stack.
Emergency Roof Tarping
Begin with what we will not do, since that is what matters at two in the morning. We do not send people onto a loaded roof in the middle of a lake-effect event, and anyone promising that this week is either lying or about to hurt somebody.
Commercial Roofing
Commercial is the one part of this market with a genuine paper trail, and it changes how we work. Non-residential construction in Pennsylvania is permitted and inspected whether the owner wants it or not, so your building has a file, and that file is an asset rather than an obstacle.
Insurance Claim Help
A roof claim is an argument about history, and in Erie County the history is missing. There is no permit file on a reroof, no inspection record, and often no paperwork from whoever did the work in 1998.
Erie Premium Roofing is a registered, insured roofing contractor in Erie, Pennsylvania, handling roof replacement, roof leak repair, storm damage work, inspections and low-slope membranes for houses, doubles and commercial buildings throughout Erie County. We install architectural laminate shingles, standing seam steel, TPO, EPDM and two-ply modified bitumen, and we work on both sides of the county line.
Repair work covers step and cap flashing, valley metal, boots at every penetration, chimney details, plank-deck re-nailing, ridge and cornice ventilation, skylight curbs, site-formed aluminum gutters, fascia and soffit carpentry, and emergency tarping. Replacements come off to the deck, and the deck itself is inspected board by board before anything new goes down, and the boards are quoted at an agreed rate rather than guessed at.
Here is what makes this town different. The city does not require a permit for a like-for-like reroof, so no inspector will ever look at the work, and no file will ever exist. We close that gap ourselves: every job leaves with a written record of the rafter size, the span, the sheathing, the layer count and what we found underneath. Free inspection, honest answer, no pressure.
What Erie Customers Say
They pulled the shingles back and showed me the boards before quoting anything. Two layers and about forty feet of split sheathing nobody else had mentioned. The deck was priced by the board so the final bill matched the estimate.
Another company wanted to put a ridge vent on our 1928 house. These guys got in the attic, showed me there is no soffit to draw from, and said it would make it worse. They fixed the actual leak for a few hundred dollars.
I got the written report with the rafter sizes and spans in it, plus photos of the bare deck. When we sold the house eighteen months later the buyer's inspector read it and had nothing to add. Worth it for that alone.
Told me straight that what I thought was hail was just an old roof losing granules and that filing would get me a denial. No hard sell. Came back in spring and did the flashing and the porch membrane for a fair price.
Why Erie Chooses Erie Premium Roofing
- ✓Every estimate carries the rafter depth, spacing, clear span and sheathing type we measured, because no permit file will ever record them for you
- ✓We count the layers that come off and photograph the bare deck, so the one moment your roof is visible is not the one moment nobody documented
- ✓We quote the deck separately from the covering, since on a 1920s plank roof the boards are the real variable and hiding them in a lump sum is how bids stop being comparable
- ✓No overlays. A second layer over plank sheathing conceals the only thing worth looking at and shortens the fastener grip the wind rating depends on
- ✓We will name the jobs that need an engineer or a mason instead of us, and that goes in writing even when it hands the job to somebody else
- ✓Manufacturer warranty registration is done by us and the paperwork goes to you, because a warranty claim without installation evidence is a letter nobody honors
About Erie Premium Roofing in Erie, PA
Erie Premium Roofing works the City of Erie, Millcreek, Harborcreek, Fairview, Summit, Edinboro, Corry, North East and the townships across Erie County. Most of what we open here was framed before any snow load standard existed, by carpenters working to a rule of thumb, and nothing since has been formally checked. That is the plain condition of roofing in this county.
Three separate authorities decline to vouch for your roof. The ASCE 7 map leaves this corner of Pennsylvania as a case-study area instead of publishing a ground snow load. The city exempts a like-for-like reroof from permitting, so no inspector attends. And the state's contractor registration explicitly is not an endorsement of skill. What is left is evidence, so we produce it: measured, photographed and written down.
Do not hire us if you want an overlay, because we will not lay a second layer over a plank deck we cannot see. Do not hire us if you want a roof certification letter, because nobody can honestly certify a load in a case-study county and we will not sign one. And if we measure real sag in your rafters, we will stop, tell you to hire an engineer, and lose the job.
How It Works
- 1
Inspection From Both Sides
Every plane that can be walked safely gets walked. Steep ones get a pole camera, then get into the attic or the third floor with a light and a moisture meter. Old Erie roofs tell you more from underneath than from the street, and most estimators never go up there.
- 2
We Measure the Structure, Not Just the Shingle
Rafter depth, spacing, clear span, sheathing type and thickness, deck fastening, layer count, and any sag we can measure against a string line. All of it is written down. In a county where the national snow load map declines to publish a number, guessing from the outside is not good enough.
- 3
A Scope You Can Compare
The proposal names the underlayment, how far the eave membrane runs, the flashing metal and its gauge, fastener count and pattern, the airflow plan and the deck work, each priced on its own line. Two bids written this way can actually be read against each other. Most Erie homeowners have never been handed one.
- 4
Tear Off, Correct, Record
The old covering comes off, the bad boards come out, the deck is refastened, and everything is rebuilt to the letter of the proposal. Then you get the finished record: dated photographs of the open deck, what was replaced, and the manufacturer paperwork registered in your name.
Commercial Roofing in Erie: Low-Slope Membranes, Bayfront Buildings and Industrial Decks
We roof warehouses and machine shops on the industrial belt, storefront blocks along the older business corridors, medical suites, restaurants, churches, schools and apartment buildings across Erie County. Commercial work is the one side of this market with a genuine paper trail, because non-residential construction is permitted and inspected whether the owner wants it or not. We build the specification to that file, and we add it to rather than working around it.
- ✓60 and 80 mil TPO and EPDM, mechanically fastened or fully adhered to the deck type
- ✓Two-ply modified bitumen where a torch-free asphalt assembly suits an older concrete deck
- ✓Polyisocyanurate to the required R-value, tapered where the deck was never sloped
- ✓Core cuts before any recover, so wet insulation is found before it is buried
- ✓Perimeter and corner fastening tightened for the open lake exposure
- ✓Curb, scupper, pitch pan and internal drain detailing rebuilt rather than sealed
- ✓Nightly weathertight condition on every phase, so tenants stay open
- ✓Twice-yearly maintenance visits with a photographed and dated condition log
Service Areas
Erie Premium Roofing serves Erie, PA and surrounding communities including:
Recent Projects Across northwestern Pennsylvania
Frequently Asked Questions
Does a roof replacement in Erie need a permit?
Inside the City of Erie, no. The city exempts window, door, roof and siding replacement from permitting as long as the dimensions or framing of the original structure are not altered. Change or repair the framing and it becomes a permit job. Outside the city the answer varies by municipality, and several townships have their work administered by a third-party agency. Before quoting, we tell you which of those categories your job sits in.
If nobody inspects the work, how do I know it was done right?
You do not, unless somebody writes it down. That is the honest answer and it is why this company exists in the shape it does. We photograph the deck open, record the rafter dimension and span, count the layers that came off, list every board replaced, and hand you the file with the invoice. It is the only inspection record your roof will ever have, so it should not be a verbal one.
What does a Pennsylvania contractor registration actually prove?
Less than most people assume. HICPA registration with the Attorney General is required of anyone doing more than five thousand dollars of home improvement work a year, and it requires liability insurance and disclosure of past judgments. It involves no trade exam, no experience requirement and no continuing education, and the Attorney General states plainly that registration is not an endorsement of a contractor's competency or skill. Ask for the number, then ask for work you can go look at.
How much snow does an Erie roof actually have to carry?
Nobody can hand you a published figure. The ASCE 7 ground snow load map treats this corner of Pennsylvania as a case-study area rather than printing a value, because elevation and lake position move the number too much across short distances. The residential code leaves the field for the local jurisdiction to fill in. In practice that means a real answer comes from measuring your framing, or from an engineer, not from a table.
Was the December 2017 storm really the state record?
No, and the correction is worth knowing. Erie International first reported 50.8 inches in 24 hours over Christmas 2017, but a State Climate Extremes Committee reviewed the observations and revised the figure to 32.6 inches, with December cut from 120.9 to 93.8 inches and the season from 198.5 to 166.3. Those revised numbers are Erie city records. Pennsylvania's 24-hour record still belongs to Morgantown in March 1958.
My house is from the 1920s. Is that a problem?
It is a set of specific conditions, not a problem. Erie's median house dates to 1947 and roughly 43 percent of the housing stock was built in 1939 or earlier, so this is most of our work. Expect plank sheathing with gaps, cut nails, a closed cornice with no soffit, and often a second layer somebody added in the eighties. All of that is workable. It just has to be found before it is priced, not after.