Term “green” has become very popular during last decade and consequently overused, misused and abused. Anything and everything can be called green today, and to make money and to attract environmentally-conscious customers, people will call themselves and their products green, even when it is just a blatant lie to confuse uneducated consumers. Being a roofing contractor, I will concentrate on roofing products and services. For example, many asphalt shingles manufacturers now offer “cool” and “green”  shingle products – to me it’s just a shameless tactics to sell same NOT-green crap  that is painted different color (usually some shade of white). Excuse me, but asphalts shingles are not green, period! The are made with asphalt, can’t be recycled and end up in landfills in 10-15 years.

Since term green is very vague and can be interpreted in many ways, I’ll offer my vision of “green” – green roofing contractor to be exact, which describes the way I think and try to operate our roofing business. I want to mention that when I say “green roofing contractor”, it has nothing to do with with a roofing contractor installing green roofs or roof-top gardens. To me a contractor installing roof-top vegetation is a highly-specialize landscaping company, but not a roofing contractor (unless they also install the actual flat roofing membrane to waterproof the building).


Quick navigation in this article:
What is a “green” roofing contractor and how one is different from regular roofing companies.
Learn about green benefits of Metal Roofing and IB Flat Roof

What is a “green” roofing contractor?

In my mind a green roofing contractor is a company that work hard to help protect environment and reduce its energy consumption and green-house gas production or carbon footprint. Sure, almost any company will have a carbon-footprint as it’s nearly impossible to be carbon-neutral, but here are many ways to achieve a much lower carbon footprint.

Here are some thing we do to make our overall operation as green as we can, all-the-while saving you, our customers, money on roof installation services, by cutting our internal costs:

First of all, we install cool roofing products, such as IB Cool Flat roofs and Metal roofing systems (usually made from about 90% recycled metal).We also try to do this in the most efficient manner possible to reduce waste, conserve resources and reduce our clients’ energy use for cooling of their home or place of business, as a result if installing our cool roofs.

What makes us a green roofing company?

Besides installing  cool and green roofing products, we strive to be green in operating our business. When it comes to estimating a roof, most roofing contractors will go to numerous roofing estimates, many of which they will not sell. Keep in mind that many home owners get as many as 5-10 estimates before they make up their mind and some roofers need to make two trips if they forgot to measure something.

We work differently: to save our time and most importantly, the energy (gasoline) it takes to drive around to hundreds, and the associated pollution, we created a system of making our estimating process as efficient as possible. This benefits everyone, and you – our customers in the first place.

Here is how our “green” roofing estimate process works:

1. When client you (homeowner or small business), contact us by email or on the phone, we collect as much information about your roof as possible. The information which we collect includes:




• Type of your roof including all roof penetrations and other specific details.
• Dimensions of your home.
• Photographs of your house and/or roof. (If pictures are unavailable for some reason, we will use Google Maps’ “street view” and Bing Maps’ “birds view” to get an idea of what your roof is like)
• Number of layers of the existing roofing materials.
• Roof age.
• Whether your roof leaks or not.
• When you plan to replace the roof.
• Any other roof related information, as well as answer as many of your questions as we can.
2. Based on the information we get from you, we assess your roof’s condition, estimate approximate cost of replacement, as well as suggest the most cost-effective solution for you, as well as address ventilation, insulation, ponding water, drainage and other roof-related issues.
3. Once we complete our analysis, we provide you with a “preliminary roofing price quote” which in our experience is about 95% accurate and may/will usually change if A) roof dimensions were provided incorrectly or B) there are more roofing layers that we were informed of and C) any other unforeseen situations, which actually rarely happen (One such situation happened when we were replacing a rubber roof in Boston, MA – there we removed old parapet cap, and found that 4 layers of brick parapet wall were sitting in completely washed out mortar. Therefore we had to rebuild the parapet wall completely, so that we could actually complete the roof installation properly).
4. Once you get our roofing price quote, you decide whether it is within your budget, and whether you want to proceed with the roof replacement and work with us. At this point many customers will ask us about our references, which we will email to you.
5. If you like our products / company / price, and want to proceed, we schedule a mutually convenient time for a Roof Inspection / Estimate, during which we actually measure your roof to make sure our quote was correct, check how many layers your roof has, make sure there will be now unforeseen situations. We also show you the product, and how it works as well as answer any questions you may have. Once we are done inspecting your roof, we give you the final roof price, which may or may not include any extra work, such as new gutters installation  or something else. Besides the extra work, our final price is 95% of the time, the same as the preliminary price quote.

What is so special about the way we estimate roofs?

The process I’ve described above, eliminates 70% of unnecessary “driving-around”, which not only helps the environment, but also saves you – our customers money! Since most roofing contractors provide seemingly “free roof estimates”, while still spending time on gas / expenses, and using their time to drive around estimating roofs, the customers that actually do sign up to work with such contractors, end up paying for all previously unsold roofing estimates. We do it differently – we give you all the information we can, including our pricing, so there are no surprises. When you have this info, you can decide if you want to work with us. To avoid charging our customers for someone-else’ unsold estimate, we implemented a $99 estimate fee, which is included in the price of the roof if you decide to work with us (it is not an extra charge). This way you only “pay” for your own estimate, and only if after the estimate you decided that for some reason you do not want to work with us. If we sign a contract – you do not pay the $99 fee. Bottom line – you, our customers don’t pay for other people who “wasted” our time, as is the case with most other roofing contractors.

When we actually go on the estimate, we also as if you have an appropriate ladder at your house, so we could access your roof. If you do not have appropriate ladder or roof access, we will bring a truck with all needed ladders. But if you do have a ladder we’d rather take a “car” instead of the truck. This may sound “cheesy” of us, but here is why we do it:

To be more green, we purchased a Toyota Prius – arguably the greenest and most fuel efficient  production car in US. The sole purpose of getting it was so that we can use it for estimating roofs. Its roomy enough to hold all the needed samples and small hand tools (such as the Hand welder for IB Roof seam welding demonstration), and can also hold additional materials for when your roof needs urgent repair work, which we can perform after the roof inspection / estimate.

Toyota Prius – Green Roofing Contractor’s estimating vehicle.

We would rather take the Prius to an estimate because we usually have to drive long distances, as our roofing jobs take place all over southern New England – we install roofs in Massachusetts, and as far west as NY borders of Western Mass. and Connecticut. Prius will save a lot of gas when we have to drive this far, and as a result a lot of pollution. And no, we do not do it to merely save a couple of bucks on gas – it will take us about 300,000 miles to break even at current gas prices ($2.59 / gallon of unleaded gas here in Massachusetts), if we compare cost of new Prius vs. new Corolla / Civic.

In the end, the way we perform our roofing estimates, benefits you (financially, as we do not need to up-charge you for costs of doing “free estimates”), us – also financially and time-wise, and the environment. This shows just one of the ways we are trying to be the “greener” roofing contractor.

Another way which makes us a greener roofing contractor is our product line of Cool Roofing products which last a VERY long time without leaks and are mostly recyclable and are often made from recycled materials. These products include IB Cool Flat Roofing membrane for flat roofs, Recycled (or new) Roofing Insulation, and different types of metal roofing materials, which often consist of more than 50% of recycled metals.

In some cases we will also recommend that you do not tear off your existing roof (this only applies to 1 layer of existing roofing materials), which will reduce land-fill waste and your costs of roof  removal and disposal. Look forward to our future article on when you should and should not tear off your old roof.

Green benefits of Cool Flat Roofing products – IB Roofs:

IB roofs’ cool white surface reflects up-to 95% of solar heat, and dramatically reduce cooling costs in the summer, and with additional thermal insulation, winter heating costs are also reduced by as much as 25-30%.

IB PVC roofing is long-lasting – you can expect your IB roof to last 30+ years without any repairs (unless there is a physical damage) while average flat roof, such as EPDM Rubber roof or tar and gravel roof, lasts 10-15 years.  Long on-the-roof service life means that you would replace your non-IB roof at least once or twice before IB roof even begins to leak. Beside enormous, non biodegradable or recyclable waste going to landfills, there is also huge amount of energy involved in installation of a new roof:

From roofing crews, each driving their F-250 or Dodge Ram to work each day, to heavy equipment delivering materials to job-site and diesel-hungry dumpster trucks going back and forth from job site to landfill, hauling the waste roofing materials.

IB Roofs are thinner and lighter than any asphalt-based product, and each roll of IB 50-mil membrane has 500 sq. ft. coverage. Therefore, for an average residential flat roof installation  we need only one trip of a fully loaded work truck or van to bring all materials, tools and 3 roofers to a job site. And we don’t need to bring a crane or haul a tar kettle around.

If you have an new hot tar or asphalt roof put on, also think about all the energy going to heat up that tar or asphalt to the point of boiling. For a torch-down modified bitumen roof, think of all the propane gas being burned to melt each square foot of that roof.

Simply by switching to cool flat roof products, a roofing contractor can in time, reduce their carbon footprint by almost 50%, increase profits, production, have happier and healthier employees (just imagine breathing in tar dust or hot asphalt fumes each day), and help protect the environment overall.

Installation video of Cool, White IB roof – hot air welding:

Green benefits of Metal Roofing:

Metal roofing is the longest lasting roofing material for sloped roofs. Some copper roofs in Europe have lasted more than 5 centuries. Metal roofs are readily made with more than 50% of recycled metals content, and will outlast ANY asphalt shingles roof by at least 3 time (when installed properly), and often will last well beyond its warranty periods.This will significantly reduce the asphalt shingles waste that goes to the landfills every 10 to 15 years, when your roof starts to leak and needs to be replaced.

Metal roofs like IB flat roofs are Cool, Energy Star compliant roofs, and will reflect significant amount of solar heat, as well as minimize heat transfer into your house. Reflectivity of metal roofs depends on the color (lighter colors will be more reflective) and the paint or coating used in manufacturing of a given metal roofing systems. The de-facto coating used in metal roofing is Kynar 500 paint and any of its variations / modifications by third-party manufacturers. These paints have in them cool roof reflective pigments, and will usually qualify of $1500 federal tax credit for energy efficient home improvements.

If your metal roof was installed incorrectly or is way past its warranty period and starts to rust / leak (only steel roofs can rust, as other metals used in metal roofing are usually rust-proof, except for corrosion caused by mixing of different metals, such as copper and aluminum). This old metal roofing materials can be recycled, and there and numerous metal recycling facilities around, where contractors bring old metals.

When we replaced old metal  roofs on IHOP restaurants (which were in part incorrectly installed over 35 years ago) in Hyannis, MA and Brighton, MA, we recycled every single piece of each of those roofs, including clips and nails used to hold them down. For more information, read or article on pros and cons of metal roofing.

Installation video of Standing Seam Cool Metal Roof:

Why hire green roofing contractors?

Basically, when you are dealing with a green roofing company, you can usually expect to work with caring and responsible people, who charge a little extra for their products and services, but will give you a lot more than your neighborhood roofer from yellow pages. It is almost a given that level of workmanship and quality of roofing products will be above and beyond than most roofing contractors. And of course the green roofing contractors will use earth-friendly products and will run their operations in a green way, which will benefit the environment. You don’t have to believe in global worming to agree that using green products and conserving energy / resources is a good thing.

If you live or own a business in Massachusetts, Connecticut or Rhode Island and need a new roof – let us know and we will give you some of the best deals around. Fill out our roof estimate form and we will help you get a “greener roof” and we promise to be gentle with mother earth!

You may use our roofing calculator to estimate the cost of your roof replacement, find out your potential energy savings (in dollars) and compare the prices of IB Roof to “not cool” EPDM rubber and Modified Bitumen (torch-down) roofs.

So is your roofing contractor green?

Forewords: If you are a building inspector / official, please try to understand that this rant from contractors point of view… Or at least be objective and unbiased.

Pros and cons of building permits:

Why do we need building inspectors (and do we really need them)? Well, they are supposed to inspect – right? They are there to protect homeowners from shady contractors, and ensure that construction goes in accordance with state / national building codes. That’s why we also have specialty trade inspectors (electrical, plumbing, mechanical, etc). But do they really do their job? Another question – why do we need building permits? Yes, to pay the building inspector for doing his/her job – do the inspections. Yea, right!

I will purposely omit building inspectors in charge of large construction projects such as bridges, sky-scrapers, factories, etc. There is a lot more responsibility there and these inspectors are a lot more knowledgeable  than your average “Joe the building inspector”.

In my being a roofing contractor, I had to pull many permits in the last 6 years – for almost every job we did. In all this time, only once have I seen a building inspector at a job site, and he was there to harass the home-owner about the “illegal kitchen” that came with the house they just purchased. In the beginning of my construction life, I needed to get permits, but did not have sufficient / adequate insurance and in some cases did not have the Home Improvement Contractor registration in a state I was doing work. Luckily for me, I was able to get permits, and because I have dignity (I’d like to think so) I did decent work without code violations and nothing bad ever happened. I once had a “stop job” order posted at a job site, where we forgot to pull a permit. Ahh… the good old days.

When you get into serious contracting like the Metal Roofing and IB Roof installations, you can’t afford not to have proper insurances and licenses. Your clients by default expect everything to be current and you to be fully insured – both worker’s comp and general liability.  And besides, it is easier to show proof of insurance than to explain why you do not have it, or better yet to ask home owner to pull “owners permit”. It is also much easier to get a permit in 5 minutes instead of waiting 3 days and hoping that inspector is not a complete a$$ or is looking for a bribe – for some reason, I have a very strong suspicion that some building inspectors in Lynn, Revere, Malden and other surrounding towns in Massachusetts, purposely jerk contractors around, as if telling them – “give me $300 and you have your permit”. I really believe so. Or they just hate people in general. But let me get back to building inspectors.

My experience with building inspectors and permits:

I will try to be logical here, and present information in chronological order. Here is a work day of a building inspector as I see it:

In 85% of the times I walked into a building department of any city and town, building inspector is not there. Apparently they are out, doing inspections. But as I mentioned before, I had never seen and inspector on my job site, to inspect my roof. If inspector is in the office, he (I will use a “he” as all building inspectors I’ve met, were guys) will make you wait 2-5 minutes before asking you what you need. Apparently they need to feel as if they have power and are in control. After the initial coldness I did get permits, so there is nothing to complain about. But there is. And it is about how I got my permits and why do we actually need to pull them and pay for them. It is my honest belief that permits were instituted as means for towns to raise money, and biased on this assumption I’m more than happy to pay the fee. But any building inspector will tell you that permit is to pay for the inspection and enforcement on the building codes.

So I will tell you a few instances of how I got some of my permits, how horrendous the process can be for a contractor, and why so many contractors, including honest, illegal and shady ones, never pull permits. There is a provision in Mass. Building code that inspector has up to 30 days to issue the permit. We installed a Metal Roof on an IHOP restaurant in Hyannis, MA (down at the Cape Cod). When I vent to pull the permit (which was an hour drive one way) I almost got rejected, as my Worker’s Comp certificate was generic and not made out to Town of Barnstable. Fortunately, my insurance agent faxed in a copy 2 minutes before town hall closed.

As a side note, due to insurance fraud, in MA, your insurance agent cannot really give you an “all purpose” worker’s comp certificate, and the actual insurance company must print one out and mail it to you. This takes at least 3 days. Imagine a regular residential roofing company which installs a roof in one day and works 5 days a week. They have to get worker’s comp certificate for each roof, for every town they work in.

As my insurance certificate came out of fax machine, the office lady called over the building inspector to look at my paperwork (after being there for an hour and a half, he never looked a it). He asked me for HIC registration ONLY, although all commercial work required me having a CSL (construction supervisor license) and HIC implies that i do home improvement. When I offered the inspector my CSL, he said that he did not need it. Neither did he need my general liability insurance. Once he verified what he was looking for, he said: “You are all set – you can start in two weeks.” Why??? Why on earth do I have to wait two weeks??? I can loose a contract in two weeks. “Fortunately” half the roof on the restaurant was blown off by a storm wind, and it was more of an emergency roof work – this was the only reason he “allowed” us to start right away. So why do we need to wait two weeks I still don’t know. Time spent to get the permit – 4.5 hours.

Another time we did a roof in Grafton, MA. An IB low-slope roof on a residential home. Nothing fancy – a pretty straight forward roof. As I applied for the permit, I was told to firs fill out 7 different forms, pay three different departments for some ridiculous things (even the health department) and I also had to submit a SPEC for IB roof installation, including MSDS sheet (why?). They did not expect me to be back for a few days, but I was determined to either get a permit or permission to start work the same day as once again I drove pretty far to make sure every thing is ready for us to start when we planned to. I quickly ran to town library and printed about 20 pages of IB specifications describing exactly the parts of the roof we were going to do (I love IB online Quick Spec writer). When I brought back the whole package, the inspector was so surprised that he gave me an “ok” to start any time. Later, his secretary told me that he will actually read the spec. If I had know, I’d print out 200 pages, of exiting reading material.  Time spent to get the permit – 5 hours.

There are many other stories I can tell about pulling a building permit. I do want to say that not all inspectors are evil. One time we told a building inspector in Abington, MA that we did not have MA HIC – only the one from Rhode Island. He was cool enough to tell us: “get the homeowner to pull the permit”, which we did and all worked out well. I also absolutely love the Boston building department. The flow of contractors there is so heavy that they do not have time for stupid things like full spec for a small residential re-roof. They check your insurances and licenses, collect a fee and give you a permit.

Many towns in MA and CT will give you permission to start and mail you the permit. Some will make you run around as a squirrel. They will want 3 days before you can start a job. So I adopted and “evolved”.  Now I call the building department of any city or town where I’m going to work and tell them that I have a 3 hours drive to just get to their town, and if the could “please let me start the same day I apply for a permit”. This usually worked great. For example, when we installed an IB flat roof in Andover, CT – I never actually met the building inspector in person. I spoke to him on the phone – told him roof leaks and is covered with tarps (which was true) and we need to start ASAP. He gave an ok and all I had to do, was apply for the permit and provide proof of insurance and a construction license.

The second flat roof which we did in the Andover, CT – I still had to talk to him on the phone. This time he wasn’t as happy but since we already came to town, I “begged” him to let us start the job, without looking at it. Once again it was a complete tear-off and pretty straight forward, so he gave us a green light. But from now on, I have to apply for permit by mail and he wants to see my work. Next time I’m in Andover, I’ll give him a call ahead of time. Here you can see the pictures of our second roof in Andover, Connecticut and on of a roof in Westminster , MA: http://www.coolflatroof.com/flat-roofing-blog/low-slope-roofing-on-shed-dormers/

Why you should have a building permit for any construction work:

Bottom line – not all building inspectors are evil. Some are very nice, some are just bored and need things to do, and some need to feel powerful. All depends on your luck. I learned how to coexist with any building inspector, and no do everything in advance – even have my insurance agent fax over my certificates before I arrive at city hall.

Why did I write all this? Well – this is my blog and I can do it! Where else can I talk about it?

What is the point of all of this? I just had to get it out of my system after years of contractor – inspector interaction. Also my friend tried to pull a roofing permit for a VERY simple and straight forward roof – a measly 9 squares  on walkable gable roof in Malden, MA. And the inspector wants to inspect … maybe he had a bad day, but my buddy has to wait a few days until he can start. Really? So this was my inspiration.

Also, I want to make a point that many inspectors let shady contractors with fake certificates slide through or don’t even check for insurance and construction license, all-the-while they make other contractors chase their tails and waste time (and money) as if they have nothing to do. They also harass homeowners and issue stupid fines for stupid violations that should be grandfathered in. This creates situations where homeowners  and contractors knowingly do not pull permits. It also creates risk for homeowners to be left out if a shady contractor does bad job and screws them – without a permit they cannot use the Mass. Homeowner Protection Fund.

Can this be fixed? I don’t see a solution since there are too many hack inspectors and contractors out there and homeowners really need to do their due diligence – check references, call people, look at the jobs, licenses, insurance certificates, etc.

I encourage any homeowner to read my article on how to choose a roofing contractor. You should also know that it is pretty easy to “scam” the building permit process. For example, a roofing contractor must have a full roofing general liability insurance, which can easily cost $10,000+ per year, and worker’s come which runs at about 35-40% of payroll ($35-40 for every $100 you pay your guys). Many contractors will buy a siding insurance for $500-700 per year and use that certificate to pull permits.  The can also claim to be “sole proprietor” on the Worker’s Comp form when they apply for a permit and get away with not having the insurance at all – even if they have employees.

As for licenses – in Rhode Island there is no construction license at all – only a contractor registration. You can do everything with it, except for electrical, plumbing, etc. In Massachusetts, only recently have they implemented a mandatory requirement for CSL to perform roofing, siding and windows work. Before, any hack could get a roofing permit with just and HIC registration.

So once again, always do your due diligence when choosing a contractor.

As for the contractors – have your paperwork ready, do good work and, good luck guys!

PS. I’m not an angel and did not start my roofing business with $20,000 to buy all proper insurance. I did my share of getting around the permitting issue. Every one goes through it, but some remain in that stage forever. As for me – I prefer to do everything the right way or not do it at all.

After 3 days of rain, we finally got some decent weather on monday. Although it was very warm for December, it was quiet windy, which slowed us down. Never-the-less, we were able to get a lot  of work done, including tearing of some old aluminum shingles/shakes, changing some plywood and of course making the roof  water-tight for the rain on Tuesday (yep, it was raining again)

As you may notice from the picture above, some of the roof rafters are not evenly spaced at 16 inches O.C., so each sheet of plywood had to be trimmed top accommodate for the difference. Also some rafters “shift” left or right from their alignment… so to speak.

Since we knew it’s going to rain overnight and the next day, we covered the entire roof area with blue tarps. Later we will come back to this section to replace the rest of the plywood. We will also install Ice & Water barrier along all eaves and valleys and GAF breathable systhetic underlayment as main waterproofing layer under the future Aluminum Shake Metal Roof.

Find more Green Blogs in Boston, MA area

On Tuesday we have finally started replacing a metal roof on the IHOP restaurant in Brighton, MA – near the Harvard stadium. This will be a big project, involving replacement of all the plywood and fixing rotted wood where necessary.

Since Tuesday night, it’s been raining non stop for 3 days, yet, we had enough time to tear off the old aluminum shakes on the section you can see in the picture, replace 3 sheets of plywood decking and make the roof watertight.

Why we replace a metal roof?

Although a metal roof (especially aluminum) should last a life-time, sometimes it does not. A roof is only as good as its installers. In this case , as well as with the IHOP metal roof in Hyannis MA,  which we installed in the beginning of the year, there we numerous installation defects. Namely, each shake was attached to the roof deck with only 3 clips and nails. While it is enough for the Brighton IHOP, since each shake is 3 sq. ft., in Hyannis, with all its high winds, shakes that were 5 sq. ft. were still attached with only 3 nails.

Another problem in case of Brighton IHOP roof, shake which apparently were manufactured by Alcoa, have very small locks – 3/8 of an inch, where as the best metal roofing systems (which we install) feature 3/4 inch locks, making them a much more durable and wind resistant metal roofing system.

Third, and this is more of a guess: the flat roof portion of the IHOP roof in Brighton was recently replaced. We found, that most of the plywood decking underneath the metal shakes was wet, soft and in some places rotted. Our conclusion is that the old flat roof was leaking, which caused some of the water to go under the metal shakes, and caused the rotted deck.

Our choice of metal roofing:

The two metal roofing shake above demonstrate a clear difference of quality design vs. the manufacturer trying to save pennies on reducing the size of the lock, which greatly reduces the integrity of the whole roof system. Honestly, we do now know why the aluminum shake on the left has such a narrow lock, but from our experience, we know that it can pose future problems such as blow-offs of the entire roof.

We will post more reports and pictures as the installation is coming along.

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