Roofing Contractor in Yarmouth, MA: Bay Side and Sound Side

Yarmouth is one town with two coastlines, and a roof does not get to pick which one it faces. Up in Yarmouth Port the houses sit above the salt marsh on Cape Cod Bay and take the north wind all winter. Down in West Yarmouth and South Yarmouth the roofs face Lewis Bay, Parkers River and Nantucket Sound, and they take salt, sun and the southwest wind from May to October. Coast Carpentry works all three villages out of our shop at 14 Parker Rd, Unit A in Osterville, which makes us a roofing contractor in Yarmouth, MA by geography as much as by trade. The house pictured above is a finished Coast roof on the Mid Cape, on the kind of footprint that lines the south side of Yarmouth.

Here is what changes about a roof depending on where in Yarmouth you live: which side of Route 6 you are on, what your house was built as, what the town and the historic district will ask of you, and how to tell a local roofer from a truck that will be gone by Columbus Day. No prices below. A real number needs a ladder, an attic hatch and an hour on your roof.

What makes roofing in Yarmouth different from the rest of Cape Cod?

Plenty of Cape towns have two kinds of houses. Yarmouth has two kinds of weather. Yarmouth Port sits on the north shore along Route 6A, with the marsh and Bass Hole behind it and nothing between the ridge line and Cape Cod Bay. The winter wind there is colder than anything on the Sound side, and snow on a north facing slope stays put. We get called to Yarmouth Port in February for ice, not for wind.

Cross Route 6 and everything changes. West Yarmouth wraps around Lewis Bay next to Hyannis, South Yarmouth runs down to Bass River and the Sound, and both villages sit under a southwest sea breeze that blows off the water every afternoon from late spring to early fall. That wind carries salt, and salt works on every piece of exposed metal on a roof: nail heads, drip edge, step flashing, vent collars. The first sign of a tired Sound side roof is a row of lifted tabs on the windward rake after a hard southwest blow, and the second is a rust stain on the siding under flashing nobody can see.

Why do so many Route 28 roofs in West and South Yarmouth fail early?

If you own a cape or a ranch on a side street off Route 28, there is a good chance it was built for July and August and only later got insulation, heat and a family living in it year round. That history is written in the roof. The pitch is often shallow, four in twelve or less on the ranches, so water moves off slowly and wind driven rain can push back up under the shingles. The attic, if there is one, is a crawl space with a single gable vent at each end, so summer heat cooks the shingles from below and winter moisture condenses on the deck.

Then somebody, decades ago, laid a second layer of shingles over the first instead of stripping it. We find that on a large share of the Route 28 houses we look at. A second layer hides rotten sheathing, holds nails less securely, runs hotter and adds weight to a frame never sized for it. It also means the roof you can see is not the roof that is failing, which is why a two layer roof is always on the replace side of our guide to whether to repair or replace a Cape Cod roof. Add a low slope addition off the back with rolled roofing from the eighties, and you have the Sound side roof we are called to most often: a tear off every time, with a proper low slope membrane on the flat section rather than another roll of mineral surface.

What does a Yarmouth Port roof need that a South Yarmouth roof does not?

The antique houses along Route 6A were framed before anyone thought of an attic as a ventilated space. The rafters land on a plate at the top of the wall with no overhang, so there is nowhere to put a soffit vent, and the attic is a warm box that melts the snow from underneath. The meltwater runs down to the cold eave and freezes into an ice dam, and on a Yarmouth Port cape that is an annual event. The fix is partly roofing and partly building science: ice and water barrier run far past the inside face of the wall, plus a ridge vent paired with low intake vents worked into the roof itself, because the house has no soffit to give us. There is more in our piece on ice dams and the roof damage they cause.

The other Yarmouth Port question is material. Many older houses on 6A still have wood roofs, and inside the Old King’s Highway district a wood roof is not something you swap for asphalt without a conversation. We install cedar roofing on Cape Cod with stainless fasteners and a breathable underlayment, and on a Yarmouth Port antique it is often the right call on its own merits. South of Route 6, nobody will ask you to keep a wood roof, and ice is a smaller part of the picture than wind.

Do you need a permit to replace a roof in Yarmouth, MA?

Massachusetts treats a reroof as construction, not maintenance, so the state building code requires a permit to strip and replace roofing. In Yarmouth the Town of Yarmouth Building Department issues it, and the inspector wants to see the ice barrier, the underlayment and the flashing before the shingles cover them. That is the only time anyone besides the roofer looks at the parts of the roof you will never see again. The permit should be in the contractor’s name. A roofer who asks you to pull it as the homeowner is asking you to give up the state protections that come with hiring a licensed, registered contractor.

North of Route 6 there is a second step. Yarmouth Port sits inside the Old King’s Highway Regional Historic District, and the town’s Old King’s Highway committee reviews exterior changes visible from a public way before the building permit is issued. A roof qualifies. Changing from wood to asphalt, changing shingle color, or adding a street facing skylight all need a certificate of appropriateness. Like for like replacement is usually straightforward, but it still has to be filed before the dumpster is ordered. We covered how that review fits into a bigger project in our post on whole-home remodels in Yarmouth.

How should a shingle roof be built for Yarmouth wind and salt?

We strip to the deck every time, because you cannot inspect sheathing through an old layer. With the deck bare we replace anything soft: on the Route 28 ranches that is usually plywood delaminated at the eaves and around old skylights, and on the Yarmouth Port antiques it can be board sheathing with gaps wide enough to lose a hammer in. Then the ice and water barrier goes on, from the eave to well past the inside face of the exterior wall, up every valley, around every penetration, and along the rakes on exposed slopes. Synthetic underlayment covers the rest.

On a low pitch the underlayment rules change. Below four in twelve, the manufacturers and the code call for doubled underlayment or a full self adhered membrane under the shingles, and below two in twelve asphalt shingles are the wrong product entirely. A lot of South Yarmouth ranches live right at that line, so we measure the slope. Starter strip goes on at the eaves and up the rakes, which is what keeps the windward edge from lifting in a southwest blow, and every shingle gets six nails. Near the water we use hot dipped galvanized nails on asphalt and stainless on cedar, and the flashing at chimneys and walls is copper or a coated steel, never bare aluminum. Ventilation comes last and matters most: a continuous ridge vent balanced by real intake at the eaves, or low roof vents where there is no soffit. Summer cottage gutters are rarely up to a year round roof, so our gutter installation crew handles those in the same trip.

How do you roof a seasonal or rental house in Yarmouth?

A large share of the houses on the Sound side of Yarmouth are second homes or summer rentals, and the owner is in Boston or Connecticut when the roof decides to fail. That changes the job. Scheduling comes first: between Labor Day and Memorial Day the rental is empty, the dumpster can sit in the driveway without blocking a guest’s car, and the crew can strip and dry in a day before the next front. October and April are the best months on the Sound side.

Second, skylights. The seventies and eighties era skylights on a Route 28 cape are usually past their life by the time the roof is, and replacing them during the reroof costs a fraction of coming back later. Third, storms. A house nobody lives in does not report its own leak, so a rental roof should get a look after any named storm. For owners who are not on the Cape, Coast’s vacation property management service exists for exactly this: one local number, a crew that knows the house, and the roof checked before the first guest arrives rather than after.

How do you choose a roofing contractor in Yarmouth, MA?

Yarmouth gets its share of storm chasers. After a big blow, trucks with out of state plates work the side streets off Route 28 offering a free inspection and a crew that can start Monday. A lot of that work is a second layer nailed over the first, no permit, no flashing replaced, and a phone number that stops working in November. Ask for the Construction Supervisor license and the HIC registration number and check both with the state. Ask who pulls the permit, and walk away if the answer is you. Ask whether the house is in the Old King’s Highway district, and listen to whether they know what that means.

Then read the scope. A roofing estimate for a Yarmouth house should say tear off, not overlay, and it should name the ice and water barrier and how far it runs, the underlayment, the starter, the nailing pattern, the metal at every chimney and wall, and the ventilation plan. If it says “replace roof, architectural shingles, 30 year warranty” and nothing else, everything that actually keeps water out of a Cape house is left to the crew on the day. Our guide on choosing a Cape Cod roofing contractor goes deeper on contracts and deposits. For Yarmouth, add one question: ask where their last three roofs were. Ours are in all three villages and in Barnstable next door. The Coast Carpentry roofing page lists what we install, and our reviews come from homeowners across the Mid Cape.

Frequently asked questions