Roofing in Newark, CA

Newark incorporated in September 1955, the first new city in Alameda County in decades, largely so its residents would not be folded into the Fremont that was forming around them the following year. The city has kept its own identity ever since, and its own ZIP code, 94560. From our shop, Newark addresses on Thornton Avenue, Jarvis Avenue, Cedar Boulevard and Newark Boulevard are a short trip across the Fremont line, which is why Adeline can usually fit a Newark estimate into a morning between Fremont jobs. Newark is the middle of our service area, with Fremont around it and Union City to the north.

Old Town along Thornton Avenue is Newark's original townsite, laid out by the Perrin brothers on the Green Point Dairy, but the roofs that keep us busy are in the tracts that followed incorporation. Lido Faire, Mowry West, Blossom Park, Newark Manor, Parkwood, Los Ranchitos and the Lake went in during the postwar boom, and the streets around Lakeshore Park and the ranch houses south of the mall filled in through the 1970s and 1980s. Bridgepointe, near the Dumbarton approach, is newer, 1990s and 2000s construction, and much of it is still on the builder's original shingles.

Those decades give a Newark roofer three recurring jobs. On the oldest tracts it is a wood shake roof that was converted to composition twenty or more years ago, often over the original skip sheathing, now with brittle shingles and rusted flashings. On the 1970s and 1980s houses it is a low-slope section over a family room or a garage addition where a three-tab shingle was never the right product and has leaked at every storm. And on Bridgepointe it is a first roof replacement on a house whose original roof is simply out of time. In each case we tear off to the deck, replace damaged plywood, install synthetic underlayment with ice and water membrane in the valleys and at the eaves, and put on an architectural shingle through our asphalt shingle roofing work.

NewPark Mall opened on August 6, 1980, at Newark Boulevard and Mowry Avenue, with Macy's and Sears as the first anchors, and the single-story ranch houses that spread out from it on Cedar Boulevard, Central Avenue and the streets off Mowry are the classic central Newark home. They have 4:12 and 5:12 hip roofs, a lot of plumbing vents for their size, and attics that were insulated once, in the 1970s, and never again. Many of them carry two layers of roofing, which the California Building Code does not allow us to add a third to, so a re-roof there is a full tear-off.

Because the roofs are simple and the houses are close together, this is also where we do a great deal of roof repair: a slipped shingle on a ridge, a cracked vent boot, fascia rotted where a downspout has been dumping on it, a chimney cap gone and water in the firebox. We fix what is broken and tell you plainly how much life the rest of the roof has. The businesses around the mall and along Thornton and Central call us for commercial roofing on their flat and low-slope buildings as well.

The western third of Newark is marsh, slough and salt pond. Newark Slough and Plummer Creek run leveed between Cargill's evaporation ponds, and Cargill still makes salt in Newark, the last active production on the bay. Beyond the ponds lies the Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge, the first urban national wildlife refuge in the country, created on 15,000 acres of salt pond in 1979 and now more than 30,000 acres of marsh and mudflat between Newark, Fremont and Alviso. The refuge is a fine thing to live beside and a hard thing to roof beside.

Newark sits at an elevation of about seven feet, and a house on the bay side of Cherry Street or out near the Dumbarton Bridge approach gets wind straight off open water with salt in it. Salt shortens the life of every unprotected steel part on a roof: painted vent pipes, galvanized valley metal, roof jacks, the fasteners on a satellite mount. It also drives moisture into the shaded north slope, where algae and moss follow. Along those streets we specify the flashing and the metal with corrosion in mind, and we recommend a roof maintenance visit every couple of years to clear the moss and check the metal before it fails.

Newark is the clearest case we have for stone-coated flashings. A painted pipe on a bayside roof rusts from the base up, and once the paint goes the metal at the bottom of the flashing, the spot where imperfections in the metal already make a leak most likely, is exposed to salt and water every foggy morning. California Stone Coating, Inc., the Fremont manufacturer, coats the flashing in the same granules as the shingle. The coating resists rust and is made not to chip, peel or fade, it needs no repainting, and it helps waterproof the flashing base. On a Newark roof that means the vents match the shingle from the day the roof goes on, and they still match after ten winters of wind off the refuge. We finish every Newark roof this way rather than offering it as an upgrade.

Newark's weather is bayside weather. Summers are dry and mild, with highs that rarely pass 90, and mornings that start under a marine layer that burns off by mid-morning. Winter brings around 15 inches of rain between November and March, and the atmospheric-river storms of the last few winters have arrived with wind that lifts shingles and rain that runs uphill under them. A roof that leaks only in a southwest gale is a common Newark complaint, and finding that leak is the job of our roof leak repair service, which traces the water from the stain to the source rather than smearing sealant on the nearest suspect.

Newark is in California Energy Code climate zone 3, the same coastal zone as Fremont, and we confirm the current Title 24 requirement for each re-roof before we order shingle. Re-roofing in Newark requires a permit from the City of Newark Building Inspection Division, part of the Public Works Department; permits are issued electronically, and we apply, post the permit and request the inspections for you. A pre-rainy-season roof inspection in September or October is the cheapest thing you can do for a Newark roof, and our phone line at (510) 791-6457 is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for the storm that arrives before you got around to it.