Reading a shingle roof from the lawn
Granule loss. Asphalt shingle is a mat with mineral granules bonded to it. When those wash off, the mat is exposed to sun and the clock speeds up. Look for bald patches in bright light, and look in the gutters — a handful of granules after a new roof is normal, a build-up on a twenty-year-old roof is not.
Curling and cupping. Edges lifting, corners turning up. Heat and age, and a sign the roof is at the end rather than in the middle of its life.
Lifted or missing tabs. Wind. Contained, usually cheap, and worth fixing before the next storm rather than after.
Uneven planes and sagging lines. A ridge that dips or a slope that waves is about the structure under the shingles, not the shingles. That is a different conversation and a more serious one.
Flashing, and where it goes wrong
Chimneys. Step flashing up the sides, counter-flashing let into the masonry, and a cricket on the uphill side of a wide chimney. Sealant smeared over the joint instead is the commonest bad repair in this trade — it looks fixed for about two seasons.
Walls. Where a roof plane meets a wall — over a bay window, at a second storey, at a dormer. Kick-out flashing at the bottom of that run is small, cheap, frequently missing, and responsible for a lot of rot inside walls that nobody sees for years.
Skylights. Old units leak at the seals as much as at the flashing, and a skylight replacement is often the honest answer where a re-flash is proposed.
Vent and pipe boots. Rubber, sun, a decade and a half. Cheap to replace and worth doing preventively when the roof is being worked on anyway.
What this costs
There is no clean price list for flashing work because it is priced by access and by what it is attached to. What published local pricing does say: repairs generally sit in the $300–$1,500 band, low-slope and flat work $750–$3,500, and the moment a repair grows past half the roof area within a year, current code applies to the whole assembly — which is a cost driver rather than a code footnote. Replacement pricing runs $5–$8 a square foot installed for asphalt shingle in this region.
What to send
Each slope from the ground, at zoom. The chimney from two angles. Any wall-to-roof junction you can see from a window. The gutters, with a close-up of what is in them. And the age of the roof if you know it — a receipt, a permit, or the year you bought the house with "roof: new" in the listing.
Prices are other firms' published figures for this region, offered as market context. Code statements paraphrase California's energy standards; check current requirements before relying on them.