Roofing in Santa Clara, CA

The Old Quad is the historic core of Santa Clara, the tree-lined grid of streets in ZIP 95050 that surrounds Santa Clara University. The university was founded in 1851 at Mission Santa Clara de Asís and is the oldest operating institution of higher learning in California, and the neighborhood grew up around it. The Old Quad still holds Victorians, Queen Annes and Craftsman bungalows from the 1880s through the 1920s, along with the Morse Mansion and other landmark houses, mixed with student rentals and infill from every decade since.

Roofing a house in the Old Quad is careful work. The pitches are steep, the roofs are cut up with dormers and gables, the chimneys are brick, and the original deck is often spaced boards laid for wood shingles, which have to be sheeted over before a modern shingle can go on. On an Old Quad roof replacement we expect to replace some decking, rebuild the step and counter flashing at every chimney, and detail the porch roofs, which are nearly always too flat for the shingle that was put on them. Landlords with rentals near campus use our roof inspection service between tenants, and we put the findings in writing so they can be handed to a property manager.

West of the Old Quad, between El Camino Real and Homestead Road in ZIP 95051, Santa Clara is a city of single-story ranch houses built in the 1950s and 1960s, when the orchards were sold off and the valley filled with housing for the electronics plants. These are the same low-pitched composition shingle roofs found across the South Bay, with wide eaves, a handful of plumbing vents, gable-vented attics that never had enough airflow, and, on many, a second shingle layer laid over the first sometime in the 1980s or 1990s.

Most of our Santa Clara work is on these houses. A tear-off to the deck, replacement of any plywood that has rotted under a slow leak at a vent, new underlayment and shingle, and stone-coated flashings in place of the painted ones is the standard job. While the roof is open we correct the attic ventilation and, if the owner wants it, add insulation through our ventilation and insulation work, because a 1950s ranch in Santa Clara with the original insulation is an oven in August. Sun tunnels are popular in these homes too, since the hallways and bathrooms in a mid-century floor plan rarely got a window.

North of US 101, in ZIP 95054, Santa Clara looks like a different city. Rivermark is a master-planned community built starting in 2002 on 152 acres of former state land along the Guadalupe River, the old Agnews Developmental Center site, and it is mostly townhomes, condominiums and small-lot single-family homes with concrete tile or architectural shingle roofs. Nearby are the office parks along Tasman Drive, the Santa Clara Convention Center, California's Great America, and Levi's Stadium, which opened in July 2014 as the home of the San Francisco 49ers.

Roofs in Rivermark are young by Old Quad standards, but they are reaching the age where tract-built details start to fail: a valley that was never metal-lined, a tile that cracked under a satellite installer's boot, or a painted pipe flashing that faded and rusted in its first few years. Homeowner associations in Rivermark also manage shared roofs on the townhome buildings, and our commercial roofing work extends to those and to the low-slope buildings in the surrounding office parks, where clogged drains and ponding water are the usual culprits.

Santa Clara is in California Energy Code climate zone 4, warmer and sunnier than Fremont across the bay. July highs average in the low 80s and the summers are dry; rainfall is about 15 inches a year, concentrated between November and March, with the last several winters delivering it in atmospheric-river bursts that overwhelm gutters and find every weak seam. The Old Quad's mature trees drop leaves and small branches on roofs all winter, and the north-facing slopes under them grow the algae streaks and moss that our roof maintenance work is built around.

One fact about Santa Clara that surprises people who move in from the surrounding cities: it runs its own electric utility. The town authorized a municipal lighting plant in July 1896, and the utility took the name Silicon Valley Power in 1998. It has nothing to do with roofing directly, though it does mean the meter and the service mast on a Santa Clara house belong to the city rather than to the regional utility, and it is a reminder that Santa Clara is its own city with its own way of doing things, including its own Building Division and its own permit rules.

The one thing an 1890s Victorian in the Old Quad and a 2005 townhome in Rivermark have in common is the painted metal sticking out of the roof. Plumbing vents, furnace flues and exhaust caps get a coat of paint at installation, and in the Santa Clara sun that paint can begin to wear off within the first year. Once it does, the metal rusts, the rust streaks the roof, and the seal at the base of the pipe, which is where leaks are most likely to begin, starts to go.

Sonrise Roofing finishes Santa Clara roofs with stone-coated flashings from California Stone Coating, the Fremont manufacturer. The stone coating provides a long-lasting finish that matches the roof color, whether that is a gray architectural shingle on a 95051 ranch or a terra cotta tile in Rivermark, resists rust, and is designed not to chip, peel or fade. Custom color blending is available for the odd shades on older roofs. The full explanation is on the stone-coated flashings page. We put them on every roof we replace in Santa Clara, laid in under the shingle courses as the roof goes on.

Plenty of Santa Clara calls are for one problem rather than a whole roof: a stain on a ceiling in a Homestead Road ranch, a rotted fascia board in the Old Quad, or a drip at a skylight in Rivermark. Our roof leak repair visits start with finding the source, which is rarely directly above the stain, and our roof repair work covers soffit and fascia, chimney flashing and vent repair on every age of house in the city.

Gutters deserve their own mention in Santa Clara. The Old Quad's street trees and the redwoods that landscapers planted in the west side tracts in the 1960s have grown into giants that fill gutters twice a winter, and an overflowing gutter is what rots the fascia and soaks the foundation. Our gutters and downspouts work here includes seamless gutters, guards for houses under heavy canopy, and cleaning before the first November storm. A gutter that drains is cheaper than a fascia board that has to be replaced.

Re-roofing in Santa Clara requires a permit from the city's Building Division, part of the Community Development Department, and eligible residential re-roofs can go through its Simple Permits program. We handle the application and inspections as part of the job. Santa Clara is in the middle of our South Bay run on the service area map, with Sunnyvale to the west and Milpitas up I-880 toward home.