Casten Roofing Inc

Same as above--House and garage roofing replaced--perfect job!

The roof looks good and should be last another 20 years.  
I'm biased, since my family has used Casten Roofing for over 25 years.  In that time I have worked with two generations of Castens and now John, who bought it a couple of years back.  They are reliable and come when I need them.  

The Office Manager, Katrina, is knowledgeable and friendly. Her work ethic regarding the details of our down payment and balance due were unsurpassed. Thank you CASTEN CHICAGO NORTHSIDE for making a huge project relatively stress free.

First contact with Casten for estimate was timely--special request to complete job within a time frame was granted. Everything went as planned with a perfect product at the end of the installation! Completely and totally satisfied--would recommend Casten for any roofing needs!

They were a tad unresponsive, especially when it came to the cost and to the schedule. I kind of had to follow up with them on that. When the work was done, there was a misunderstanding with the work and the individual. The work that they did was fine. There is a 7-year warranty on parts and labor. If any issue comes up, I will bring it up to them. The roof is not leaking. They did what they were supposed to do. I'm just kind of waiting on how it's going to hold up.

So far, since the time I submitted my contract and down payment on 9/16, it's been a nightmare.

The leaks in my roof are getting worse and the nice person with whom I initially dealt is clearly very unresponsive.  I get excuses about the weather and the shinglers.  Well if it's raining, isn't that a good day to return phone calls? 

The difference between a great contractor and one that is not just the quality of their work but their professionalism. 

See above. Very responsive. Didn't make more of the problem then it was.

We moved into a new house with a flat roof in early 2009. In the summer of 2010, we started noticing that seams in the rubber roof were popping open in many places and that the roof was abnormally soft under foot in several spots, along the balustrade at the front of the house and by one of the scuppers on the side of the house. We had additional problems with the roof of the garage. The garage roof did not have enough pitch to it and never seemed to drain properly. We complained about this soon after we moved in and the builder installed some drains in the garage roof the first summer we were here. But the drains never worked very well--they got stopped up very easily. To make matters worse, they began to leak into the garage during the 2010-2011 winter. For complicated reasons, neither the original builder nor the roofer are in the picture anymore. During the summer of 2010, we talked to several roofers and water damage experts. In general, I was amazed by how unresponsive they were. They'd show up and take a look, but then months would go by before we'd hear back from them. We weren't necessarily in a great hurry, since we understood that if we were forced to replace the old roof, it would cost a lot of money. We ended up receiving several quotes--on average, more than $20,000--but decided that we'd wait until the following spring to take a closer look and make a more informed decision. In the Spring of 2011, we heard about Casten Roofing through a friend who had used them and recommended them very highly. John Nichols came out the day after I called him. After looking at the house roof, he determined that we very likely did have some rot in the insulation and the plywood at the front of the house and by the problematic scupper. He gave us several options--from a patch and repair of the problem spots to a new roof with a 10 year warranty. He also recommended that we remove the drains from the garage roof, install tapered insulation so that the roof would drain toward the scuppers, and install new rubber over the insulation. I talked to several other people who had used Casten Roofing and had good experiences and decided that we were comfortable using them. After weighing our options, and despite the considerable expense, we decided to go with a new roof for the house. We decided that the peace of mind that a new, warrantied roof installed by a competent roofer would be worth the added expense. We also decided to add significant new insulation to the roof (3 inches/18.5 r value). In addition, we decided to go along with his recommendation for the garage. They arrived on April 29 to fix the garage. They patched the holes created by the drains that didn't work. They then installed the tapered insulation;  a new rubber roof over the old one;  flashing along the seam where the brick and the rubber meet; and two roof vents. They were finished by the end of the day.  They started on the house roof on Monday, May 2. They removed the roof on the back half of the house first and found disintegrating insulation and rotting plywood--as we expected--over the scupper. They patched where plywood needed to be replaced, installed the new insulation, followed by a recovery board and a base sheet. The next day, they started at the front of the house. They removed the old roof and found considerable damage to the plywood along the balustrade. They replaced the damaged plywood and then proceeded to apply the insulation, recovery board, and base sheet. On the third day, they installed the roof. At the end of the week, they replaced the roof on top of our roof house--which, needless to say, was also a mess--installed flashing around the edge of the roof, and installed  eight roof vents.  They were finished--with a few minor delays due to rain--on Friday, May 6. The original roofer obviously did not know what he was doing and unfortunately, we got stuck cleaning up the mess. We were fortunate to find Casten Roofing. Though the overall cost of this project was significant, Casten's quote was quite reasonable compared to the others quotes we received. We would gladly recommend them to others.