Roof Cleaning in Grosse Pointe

Roofs here are the reason we send our most experienced crew. Slate and clay tile are standard on the 1910 to 1950 houses of the City, Park and Farms, and the Edsel and Eleanor Ford House of 1927 on the Shores lakefront is the landmark those neighboring rooflines were built alongside. This is not asphalt shingle work. A slate is a thin stone hung on a nail, and a person's weight on the wrong course cracks it. Clay tile behaves the same way. Replacement pieces for a roof laid ninety years ago are hunted down, not ordered. So the rule is short: no foot traffic where it can be avoided, and no pressure at any time.

What grows up there is moss and lichen, not only the black streak that covers asphalt roofs elsewhere. A century of street trees drops shade and organic litter on the north slopes, and moss roots in the seams between slates and in the pan of a tile. As it thickens it lifts the course slightly and holds water against the nail and the felt below. Lichen goes the other way and bonds to the stone face itself. Both answer to the same approach: a solution that kills the organism, then time. Dead growth sheds over the following weeks under normal rain instead of being scraped away.

Copper valleys, flashing and gutters run through most of these roofs, and they belong in the plan rather than in the cleanup. Runoff from a treatment passes straight through them on its way to the downspouts, so we flush and dilute while the work is underway and protect the planting beds at the discharge points. Roof treatment starts at $450 and holds three to five years under this canopy, at the shorter end on north slopes with deep overhang. The estimate states roof area and the access plan before anyone sets a ladder.

Why Scraped and Blasted Roofs Fail Early

Pressure on slate drives water up under the courses and into the deck. On clay tile it strips the weathered surface so the exposed body drinks water and spalls at the first hard freeze. Scraping moss by hand takes glaze or stone with it and leaves the seam open for the next spore. Both methods also break pieces along the walking line, and the bill arrives late: not that day, but the following spring as a ceiling stain in an upstairs room.

Timing It Right

Late spring through early fall is the working window, since the solution wants a dry roof and hours above freezing. September suits these streets: the canopy has not dropped yet, so slopes are clear to work, and the treatment has weeks of autumn rain ahead to carry the dead moss off. Roofs from the Shores end of Lake Shore Rd down to Vernier Rd in the Woods often pair with fall gutter cleaning on one visit.