Roofing in Davenport, IA

Davenport is an old city and its roofs show it. The half of town below Locust Street is largely pre war housing with steep cut up roofs, plank decking under the shingles and brick chimneys that need real counter flashing rather than a bead of sealant. North of Kimberly Road the housing turns to post war ranches and split levels with simple gable roofs, which are cheap and fast to replace and which have usually been done twice already.

The Neighborhoods We Work In Most

The Village of East Davenport and McClellan Heights hold the oldest and most complicated roofs in the city. Slate, turrets, dormers, bay roofs and chimneys that were built before flashing was standardized. Those are careful jobs and they are the ones where a cheap bid costs the most.

Around Vander Veer Park and the Hilltop Campus area the stock is large early century houses on steep lots, a lot of them cut into apartments at some point, which means roof penetrations added over the years by whoever was handy.

Out toward Eastern Avenue, the 53rd Street corridor and the northwest subdivisions the roofs get simple and the work gets predictable. Those are one day jobs.

What the River Valley Does to a Roof Here

Davenport sits on bluffs above the Mississippi and gets weather from every direction. Hail in late spring and early summer. Straight line wind that runs the valley. Then a freeze and thaw cycle that swings a dark roof surface through well over a hundred degrees between January and July.

The practical effect is that joints fail here faster than the shingles do. Flashing, pipe boots and valley metal are where we spend most of our repair time in this city, and it is why our estimates name every one of them.

Ice Dams Are a Davenport Specialty

The older neighborhoods have deep eaves, low attic insulation by modern standards and knee wall spaces that leak heat straight into the roof. That combination is the recipe for an ice dam, and every January the same houses grow the same wall of ice.

It is fixable and it is not fixed on the roof. See Ice Dams, Start to Finish, which is free and takes ten minutes to read.

What We Get Called For in Davenport

• Ice dam damage at the eaves on the older streets, showing up in March
• Chimney and step flashing leaks on pre war houses
• Hail claims across the newer northwest subdivisions

The Numbers for Davenport

Every figure below is a real Census estimate for this exact place. Nothing here is modeled, interpolated or borrowed from the county.