Roofing in Sunnyvale, CA

Joseph Eichler's company built post-and-beam homes across the Peninsula and South Bay from the late 1950s into the 1960s, and Sunnyvale has one of the largest concentrations anywhere. Most of it is in ZIP 94087, south of El Camino Real. Fairwood, in the Birdland neighborhood where the streets carry names like Mallard, Kingfisher and Dartshire, is 215 Eichlers built in 1961 and 1962. Fairbrae, Rancho Verde and Primewood are the other well-known tracts, and Ponderosa Park has one of the densest Eichler counts in the county. Cherry Chase, one of the biggest neighborhoods of traditional 1950s ranch houses in Santa Clara County with more than 2,400 homes, hides a few small pockets of atrium-model Eichlers from about 1961 among the ranches.

An Eichler roof is flat or nearly flat, sits on exposed tongue-and-groove decking with no attic beneath it, and drains to a few scuppers or downspouts rather than off a pitched edge. The original roof was tar and gravel, and on many homes it is still there under one or more layers of later work. Radiant heat in the slab means there is no ductwork in the ceiling, and there is no attic to hide a leak: water that gets through the roof shows up on the beams inside, and by the time a stain appears the decking above it has usually been wet for a while.

Two systems make sense on a Sunnyvale Eichler today, and we install both. Spray polyurethane foam goes on as one continuous layer with no seams, adds insulation to a roof that has none, weighs a fraction of the tar and gravel it replaces, and can be built up to correct the low spots where water ponds. It is finished with an elastomeric or silicone topcoat that has to be recoated on a schedule, and it needs a roofer who will actually come back to do that rather than one who disappears after the install. Single-ply membrane, TPO or PVC, is a factory sheet with heat-welded seams, lighter than gravel and cleaner looking, but it does not add insulation and it is more vulnerable to punctures from dropped tools and tree debris.

The right choice depends on the house. A roof replacement on an Eichler in Fairwood starts with a look at how many layers are up there, whether the decking has rotted at the scuppers, and how the owner wants to handle insulation on a roof that has none. Eichler owners in Sunnyvale also lean heavily on our roof maintenance work, because a flat roof needs its drains cleared and its coating checked every year in a way a pitched roof does not. Any pipe or vent that comes up through a foam or membrane roof gets a stone-coated flashing rather than a painted one.

Not every roof in Sunnyvale is flat. The bulk of Cherry Chase and the streets around Ponderosa Park are conventional 1950s and 1960s ranch houses with low-pitched composition shingle roofs, and they need what every ranch tract in the Bay Area needs: a tear-off when the second or third shingle layer wears out, new underlayment, better attic ventilation, and flashings that do not rust. The Heritage District in 94086, the walkable blocks around Murphy Avenue and the Sunnyvale Caltrain station, has older housing than the tracts, with 1920s to 1940s bungalows on steeper pitches and the occasional Victorian.

Our roof repair calls in these neighborhoods run to the usual list: a leak at a plumbing vent, rotted fascia behind an overflowing gutter, a chimney flashing that has separated from the masonry, or a valley that was never lined with metal. On the older Heritage District homes we also replace soffit and fascia boards and re-flash chimneys that have been patched with tar more than once. Buyers in Sunnyvale ask for a roof inspection before closing on nearly every sale, and on an Eichler that inspection is one of the most important pieces of due diligence there is.

Sunnyvale is in California Energy Code climate zone 4, one zone warmer than Fremont across the bay. Summers are warm and dry, with July highs averaging in the low 80s, and rainfall is about 15 inches a year, nearly all of it from November through March. The south end of the city near Cherry Chase is sheltered and sunny; the north end in ZIP 94089, out by Moffett Park, NASA Ames and Baylands Park, gets more wind and marine air off the bay. Because Sunnyvale is in zone 4, the cool-roof rules in Title 24 apply differently than they do in the coastal zone, and the city's Building Safety Division checks re-roof permits against the current Energy Code. That matters most on flat roofs, and we go over what applies to a specific house before the estimate is written.

The north side of Sunnyvale is also where the tech campuses are. Moffett Park is lined with office buildings on low-slope roofs, and the Apple buildings along Wolfe Road and the road to Apple Park in Cupertino sit at the south end. Our commercial roofing work in Sunnyvale is on the smaller buildings that surround those campuses: single-ply membrane and coating jobs on tilt-up shops, labs and office parks where roof drains have clogged and water has found the seams.

Sunnyvale is named for its weather, and the sun that makes the city pleasant is hard on painted metal. Every plumbing vent and furnace flue on a Sunnyvale roof was most likely painted at installation, and paint on a south-facing pipe in a zone 4 summer can start to wear off within the first year. On a flat Eichler roof the problem is worse, because the pipe flashings sit in a coating or membrane where the seal at the base is doing all the work.

Sonrise Roofing finishes every Sunnyvale roof with stone-coated flashings from California Stone Coating, the Fremont manufacturer. The stone coating is a durable finish that matches the roof color, resists rust, and is designed not to chip, peel or fade in the sun. Most importantly, it helps waterproof and protect the flashing at the base of the pipe, which is where leaks on any roof are most likely to start. On a foam or single-ply Eichler roof, the flashing can be matched to the topcoat; on a Cherry Chase shingle roof, to the shingle. The details are on the stone-coated flashings page. They are installed as part of a roof replacement, which is when the flashing plates can be woven in under the shingle courses properly.

Sunnyvale requires a permit to install, repair or replace more than 100 square feet of roof covering. Permits go through the city's Building Safety Division at the One-Stop Permit Center in City Hall, and applications, inspections and payments run through its E-OneStop online system. We handle that as part of every job. Sunnyvale is the westernmost of our Santa Clara County cities on the service area map; Santa Clara is next door to the east and Mountain View to the north, and the same crew works all three.