Roof Replacement
On a typical house, the old roof comes off and the new one goes on between early morning and dark. One day. Customers describe it that way over and over — tear-off, deck inspection, dry-in, new covering and cleanup, all inside a single working day — and it is the most consistently reported thing about how APC Roofing works. Full replacement is also the bulk of what the company does; it is the core of the business rather than a line on a services list. What follows is what actually happens in that day and in the weeks either side of it.
Reading whether the roof is finished
Age on its own is a weak signal. The stronger ones are patterns. Repairs that keep moving to a new spot each season. Bare or brittle material across whole slopes rather than in one corner. Granules filling the gutters after every rain. Curling or cracking showing up everywhere at once. Daylight or damp sheathing visible from inside the attic. Stains that come back after being fixed. Sagging along a ridge or between rafters belongs in a different and more urgent category, because that is structure rather than covering. One failure in one place is a repair. The same failure appearing in five places is a roof telling you it is done, and the arithmetic that settles it is usually simple: add up three years of repeat repairs and set the total beside a replacement.
Most of the labour happens before the new roof starts
The volume of the old roof surprises people. Three thousand square feet of architectural shingle is roughly four tons of material that has to come off, be carried down and be hauled away — and if a previous owner roofed over the original, it is double that. Layers matter for a second reason: residential code requires a full tear-off rather than another overlay once two coverings are already up there, so recovering is not always a choice even where it looks like the cheap one. Practically, tear-off means a dumpster or dump trailer on site, plywood and tarps protecting siding, landscaping and air-conditioning units, and a magnet run over the ground at the end of every working day rather than only on the last one. Thorough cleanup — no debris left behind, nails picked up — is the single most consistently praised thing in APC's customer reviews, which is a low bar in principle and one a surprising number of contractors miss.
What to have in writing before anyone starts
Once the roof is stripped, the sheathing is visible for the first time in years, and soft or delaminated boards have to be replaced — nothing new should ever be fastened into wood that will not hold. That work cannot be priced in advance, but the rate for it can. Ask for a per-sheet figure for replacement decking in the proposal so the number is agreed before it is needed, and ask that changes be photographed and approved in writing rather than appearing on the final invoice. Ask who your single point of contact is; customers here consistently describe one named consultant carrying the job from the first inspection through to completion, and that is worth confirming for your own job. Ask whether the permit is being pulled by the contractor and when the municipal inspection is scheduled — permitted work gets signed off by a building inspector, and that sign-off is a protection rather than a delay. And ask what happens with the gutters, which are commonly replaced along with the roof because the drip edge, roof edge and trough are one detail. The National Roofing Contractors Association publishes the workmanship standards a proposal can reasonably be held to.
Straight answers
How much does a roof replacement cost?
Published 2026 cost guides put a standard asphalt shingle replacement at roughly $7,000 to $17,000 for a roof in the 2,000 square foot range, or about $3.50 to $12 per square foot installed. Treat that as orientation, not a quote. Pitch, the number of old layers to tear off, the condition of the decking and the material you choose move the number far more than the footprint does.
Roofers price work by the square. One square is 100 square feet of roof surface. A house with a 2,000 square foot footprint does not have a 2,000 square foot roof — the slope adds area, and a steep roof can add 15 to 30 percent on top of the footprint before anyone counts a shingle.
Published 2026 cost guides put a standard asphalt shingle replacement somewhere around $7,000 to $17,000 for a roof in the 2,000 square foot range, or roughly $3.50 to $12 per square foot installed. Treat those as orientation, not a quote. They are national averages built from thousands of jobs across every climate and code in the country. Your roof has a specific pitch, a specific number of valleys, and a specific deck underneath that nobody can see until the old roof comes off.
What actually moves the number
Size and pitch come first. Anything over about a 7/12 pitch usually needs staging, harnesses, or roof jacks, and the labor hours climb. Then layers: tearing off two old layers instead of one roughly doubles removal labor and disposal weight.
Decking is the biggest unknown. Plywood or plank sheathing that has been wet for years will be soft, and code will not let anyone nail a new roof to it. A good estimate says up front what a sheet of replacement decking costs and how many sheets are included. If that line is missing, you have not been given a price — you have been given an opening bid.
Complexity matters more than most homeowners expect. Every valley, every chimney, every skylight, every plumbing boot and every wall-to-roof transition is hand-cut flashing work. A simple gable roof and a cut-up roof of the same square footage are not the same job.
Then there is access. A roof you can walk a ladder to is cheaper than one where the crew has to carry bundles around a pool cage or a steep back lot.
Why 2026 prices are higher than the number in your head
Every major shingle manufacturer raised list prices in spring 2026, generally in the mid-single-digit range, on top of increases in prior years. Metal roofing took the hardest hit, because steel and aluminum tariffs pushed coil costs up sharply. Labor has also gotten more expensive as experienced crews got harder to find. If you priced a roof in 2019 and have been carrying that figure around, it is out of date.
Code and climate add real cost in some places
Florida roofs carry requirements that plenty of other states do not: secondary water barriers, specific nailing patterns, and rules about how much of a roof can be repaired before the whole thing has to come off. Those requirements exist because they work, but they are part of the price.
In Colorado, Kansas and Missouri, the choice that moves cost most is impact-resistant shingles. A Class 4 impact-rated product costs more per square than a standard architectural shingle. Many carriers in hail country give a premium credit for it, so the question is whether the credit and the longer survival through a hail season pay back the upfront difference on your particular house.
How to read a number you have been given
Ask what is included: tear-off and disposal, underlayment type, ice-and-water shield at eaves and valleys where required, drip edge, new pipe boots, ridge and intake ventilation, permit, and the decking allowance. Ask what happens to the price if the crew finds rot. Two quotes that differ by thousands usually differ because one of them left something out, not because one company is greedy.
If you are in Florida, look at the My Safe Florida Home program before you sign anything. It offers free wind mitigation inspections and grant funding toward qualifying roof and opening upgrades, and it can change the math on what you choose to install.
Why do roofing quotes vary so much for the same house?
Most of the gap comes from scope, not honesty: the roofers did not price the same job. Tear-off depth, underlayment, flashing, ventilation and decking allowances each have a cheap version and a durable version, and a one-page quote hides all of them. Compare line items, not totals, and ask each bidder what happens to the price if the deck turns out to be soft.
Three roofers walk the same roof and come back with three numbers that are thousands of dollars apart. Homeowners usually read that as one company being honest and the others padding. Most of the time the real explanation is duller: the three companies did not price the same job.
A roof replacement is not one product. It is a stack of decisions — how much of the old roof comes off, what goes over the deck, how the edges and penetrations are handled, how the attic breathes. Each of those decisions has a cheap version and a durable version, and a one-page quote can hide all of them.
The line items that create most of the gap
Tear-off versus overlay. Nailing new shingles over old ones is faster and cheaper, and it is legal in some places for a single existing layer. It also traps heat, hides rotten decking, voids some manufacturer warranties, and makes the next replacement more expensive. A quote that overlays will always beat a quote that tears off.
Decking allowance. Nobody knows the condition of the sheathing until the roof is open. Honest estimates state a per-sheet price and how many sheets are already in the total. Estimates that say nothing about decking are the ones that produce an unpleasant phone call on day two.
Underlayment. Fifteen-pound felt, thirty-pound felt, and synthetic underlayment are three different products at three different prices. So is peel-and-stick ice-and-water membrane at eaves, valleys and penetrations. In Florida, a secondary water barrier over the deck is a code and mitigation issue, not a nice extra. In Colorado, self-adhered membrane at the eaves is what keeps an ice dam from pushing meltwater back into the ceiling.
Flashing. Reusing old step flashing, chimney flashing and valley metal saves real money. It also puts twenty-year-old metal under a thirty-year roof, and flashing is where most roofs eventually leak. Ask specifically: is flashing new, or reused?
Ventilation. A roof needs balanced intake at the soffit and exhaust at the ridge. Adding intake often means cutting soffit vents, which is labor. Skipping it cooks the shingles from underneath and can void warranty coverage.
Nails and nailing pattern. Four nails versus six, and where they land relative to the nail line, is the difference between a roof that holds in a 70 mph gust and one that does not. High-wind nailing is standard practice in Florida coastal counties and a very good idea on the Kansas and Missouri plains, where the straight-line winds behind a squall line do most of the shingle damage. The National Weather Service high wind safety pages give a sense of what those gusts actually are.
How to force an apples-to-apples comparison
Write your own short list and hand the same list to everyone bidding: tear-off to deck, decking price per sheet, underlayment product name, ice-and-water locations, new drip edge, new pipe boots, new step and valley flashing, ridge and intake ventilation, nails per shingle, permit, dumpster and cleanup, and the workmanship warranty length in writing. Ask for the shingle by manufacturer and product line, not just "architectural."
Then look at the two ends. A bid far below the others usually skipped something on that list. A bid far above the others should be able to point at what it includes that the others do not. Either way, the answer should be a specific line, not a speech about quality.
One warning about storm-season bids
After a hail or wind event, the cheapest number in the driveway often comes from a crew that arrived with the storm and will be three states away by spring. Price is one variable. Whether the company will answer the phone in year four is another, and it does not appear on the estimate at all.
