There is one line on a roofing estimate that almost nobody reads, and it is the line that decides how your roof looks in eight years: the hips and the ridges.
We inspected a house in McAllen recently where the roof was a 30-year architectural shingle on every flat surface — a good roof. The caps running along the peak and down every angled hip were something else entirely: a 25-year three-tab shingle, cut into three pieces and folded over each corner. The homeowner had no idea. He is replacing the roof now, at about eight to ten years old.
Why cutting up a three-tab is a problem
A three-tab shingle is manufactured to lie flat on a roof deck. It is not made to fold. When you cut one into thirds and bend each piece over a hip or a ridge, you break the fibres in the mat that holds it together. That piece is weakened the day it goes on, before it has seen a single summer.
Then the Rio Grande Valley sun gets to work on the fold. The crack opens, the granules that protect the asphalt come away, and the cap loses its rigidity. On the house in this video, every ridge and every hip has gone the same way.
Why it shows up on a cheaper quote
Using a field shingle as a cap is cheaper than buying a purpose-made hip-and-ridge product, and it takes less material. It lowers the number at the bottom of the estimate, which makes that estimate more likely to win. Nothing about it looks wrong on the day the job is finished.
That is the honest reason it keeps happening: it saves the homeowner money today and costs them a roof later, and nobody is around to connect the two.
What to compare before you sign
- Find the hip and ridge line on every quote. It should name a hip-and-ridge cap product, not a field shingle.
- Check the cap rating matches the field shingle. A 25-year cap on a 30-year roof is a weak point in the most exposed place on the house.
- Put the material lists side by side before the totals. A gap of thousands is usually material, not margin.
- Ask for product names in writing. “30-year shingle” is a category, not a product.
How to spot it on a roof you already own
Stand across the street and look along the ridge line. If the caps have faded, darkened or gone patchy at a noticeably different rate to the rest of the roof, that is worth a closer look. Up close, you are looking for cracked folds at the peak and bare patches where the granules have gone.
Get the roof looked at
A roof inspection from Frontline Roofing is free, and you get photos of what we find, hips and ridges included. If you are comparing two quotes, bring us the other one and we will go through it line by line with you.
Call or text (956) 586-5711. We cover McAllen, Mission, Edinburg and the rest of the Rio Grande Valley, and we handle roof replacement and roof repair.
Watch the full inspection: the wrong hip and ridge shingles on a 30-year roof. More videos are on the Frontline Roofing video page.