U-Factor, SHGC and the Ratings That Matter in Michigan
Every window in a showroom carries a white and black sticker with five numbers on it. Those numbers are the only objective, comparable information you will get about a window, and most homeowners are walked past them. Here is what each one means, which two matter most in a heating climate, and why the sticker […]
How James Hardie Siding Holds Up in Michigan’s Freeze-Thaw Cycle
Fiber cement has a good reputation in cold climates and it deserves most of it. What gets left out of the sales conversation is that the material’s performance here is conditional. The board is tested against freeze-thaw. The installation is what decides whether the board ever gets tested at all. What the material actually is […]
Ice Dams in Michigan: Why They Form and What Actually Stops Them
Almost everything sold as an ice dam solution addresses the ice rather than the reason it is there. An ice dam is a heat-loss problem that happens to show up on your roof, and the fixes that work are inside the house, in a specific order that the Department of Energy has already published. The […]
How Long Does a Roof Actually Last in Michigan?
The number on the wrapper and the number you get are different, and the gap between them is not random. It is made up of five things: how the attic breathes, how the eaves handle ice, which way the slope faces, how the shingles were installed, and what the word “lifetime” means in the warranty […]
5-Inch vs 6-Inch Gutters: How to Size a Michigan Roofline
Gutter size gets quoted off the square footage of the house, which is the wrong number. What a gutter has to carry is set by the area of roof draining into that particular run, how steep that roof is, how the water concentrates before it arrives, and how many downspouts are there to take it […]
Gutters in a Michigan Winter: Ice Loading, Damage and What Helps
Every February, someone calls about a gutter hanging off the front of the house and asks what went wrong with the gutter. Usually nothing did. The gutter was carrying a load it was never designed for, delivered by a problem that starts in the attic and ends at the eave — and understanding which part […]
EPDM, TPO and Modified Bitumen: Choosing a Low-Slope System
Most Metro Detroit buildings with a low-slope roof did not set out to have one. A porch, a dormer, a rear addition, a garage, a strip of flat behind a parapet on a commercial block. Whatever the reason it is there, the covering has to waterproof rather than shed, and that changes every rule. Here […]
Gutter Guard Types Compared: What to Buy for Your Tree Cover
There is no best gutter guard, and any comparison that produces a single winner has stopped describing the problem. The right choice is set by what falls on your roof, how steep that roof is, and how the gutter beneath it is sized and hung. This is a decision guide built in that order, because […]
Do Gutter Guards Actually Work in Michigan?
Yes, with conditions worth understanding before you spend money. Every guard type trades one problem for another, and the trade you want depends almost entirely on what is falling out of the trees over your particular roof. The honest version of this answer has a lot of “it depends” in it, and anyone selling you […]
A Practical Maintenance Plan for a Michigan Commercial Roof
A commercial roof rarely fails all at once. It fails at a seam nobody looked at, at a drain that filled with leaves in October, at a flashing a technician stepped on while servicing a rooftop unit. Almost all of it is findable in advance, and most of it is cheap to fix while it […]