What Does Your Roof Warranty Cover?

Knowing what kind of protection homeowners can expect from a roof warranty is a complicated question.

There are manufacturer warranties that cover the materials themselves, and there are workmanship warranties offered by the roofing contractors that install the work. Sometimes these warranties overlap, but that’s certainly not always the case. Just what kind of roof warranty do you need, and what does each kind actually protect you against?

The most common kind of roof warranty is a shingle warranty or manufacturer's warranty, which may cover you for 20 to 50 years. However, this type of warranty only protects you against defects in the roofing materials themselves, causing them to break down or fail before they should.

And as Hollingsworth Roofing, a Charlotte roofing contractor, points out, a manufacturer's warranty may be void if the homeowner cannot demonstrate the roof has been periodically maintenanced.

Although having a manufacturer warranty is valuable, it's actually rare for a roofing problem to be traced to a manufacturing defect. More commonly, a substandard roof is attributable to poor installation — against which you may have no warranty. For that reason, it's important to hire a highly rated roofer.

And even if the materials themselves are at fault, your warranty may only cover those materials — not the labor required to install them.

A roofer who installs your new roof may offer an installation warranty or workmanship warranty. This covers the contractor's work that goes into putting a new roof on or other labor associated with your roofing project. Larry Haight’s Residential Roofing Company, a Seattle roofing contractor, offers such a warranty. His company guarantees its work for the lifetime of the roof.

More of these kinds of workmanship warranties are being offered by roofing contractors who want to stand by their work, but usually it carries some kind of clause stating that the warranty is only valid if that contractor is the only one to work on the roof. If you bring in another contractor to fix something on the roof after the original labor, the workmanship warranty may be void.

Editor's note: This is an updated version of an article originally posted on Sept. 19, 2012.