Charlotte Mansard Roof Replacement

Stand in the street in front of this house and you’d say it has a steep shingle roof with two dormers. You’d be about half right.

Put a drone up and the other half shows itself. Behind those steep faces there’s a lot of flat roof. Flat sections that hold water, collect leaves and get walked on by nobody for years at a time. On a house like this, the part of the roof that causes trouble is the part the owner never sees.

That’s why this job is documented almost entirely from the air.

Can’t see your whole roof from the ground? Call 704-847-7119 and we’ll show you what’s up there.

Before and after, same angle

Compare the two. In the before shot, the flat areas are a patchwork of tan, gray and rust colored stains. The shingle slopes are dark and flat looking, worn down to the point where they’ve lost most of their texture. After, the shingle faces are an even gray with clean hip lines, and the flat sections are a uniform white.

Three things the drone showed that a ladder wouldn’t

1. How much of the roof is flat. From the ground you’d guess a small flat patch. From above, the flat sections wrap around the chimney and run along the back of the house.
2. Where water sits. Those rust and brown stains on the flat sections are tide marks. Water was pooling there and drying out over and over, leaving dirt behind each time. Ponding shortens the life of any flat roof surface.
3. The condition of every slope at once. Instead of climbing each face, the crew could see wear patterns across the whole roof, then go up and check the spots that looked worst by hand.

This one’s taken closer in, before work started. Two of our crew are on the flat section. You can see the staining around the chimney and the worn shingles in the foreground. If you’ve never had anyone physically on your flat roof, this is roughly what’s waiting up there.

What is a mansard roof, and why is it tricky?

A mansard roof has two pitches on each side: a very steep lower slope, often with dormers set into it, and a low or flat section on top. It gives you more usable space upstairs, which is why you see it on homes built in certain eras around Charlotte. Some houses use a true mansard, others a mansard look on part of the house. Either way, the roofer is dealing with two different roofs on one house.

• The steep faces shed water fast, so shingles work well there. But they’re hard to work on safely, and the dormers each need their own flashing.
• The flat top can’t take shingles. It needs a low slope surface built to handle water that sits.
• The transition where steep meets flat is the critical line. The flat surface has to lap correctly over the top of the steep face, or water gets in at the edge.

We go deeper on low slope materials in TPO vs EPDM vs modified bitumen, and our flat roof service page covers repair and replacement options.

Two roof types on one house? That’s normal for us. Call 704-847-7119 for a free next-day estimate.

Why white on the flat sections?

Charlotte summers are long and hot. A dark flat roof soaks that heat up and passes it down into the rooms right below, which on a mansard are the upstairs bedrooms. A bright white surface reflects a big share of that sunlight back off the roof. It also makes problems easier to spot later: a stain, a tear or a puddle stands out against white in a way it never would against gray.

The steep faces and the dormers

The photo at the top of this page is the street side after the work. New gray architectural shingles run up the steep face, cut in around the two dormers. Look at the edges where the shingles meet the dormer walls. That’s step flashing territory, the same detail that matters on any dormer. If yours are giving you trouble, our dormer repair page explains what usually goes wrong.

Architectural shingles were the call here instead of 3-tab. They’re thicker, they hold up better in wind, and on a steep face that people actually look at, the dimensional texture looks a lot better. The full comparison is in architectural vs 3-tab shingles.

What a drone can’t tell you

We like drone photos. They’re also not the whole inspection. A camera in the air can’t feel a soft deck, can’t see inside the attic, and can’t tell you whether that stain on the flat roof is a surface mark or wet insulation underneath. So the drone tells us where to look, and then someone still goes up and checks by hand. Be wary of any company that offers a “drone only” roof report and calls it done.

Our full roof inspection page explains what we check and what you get afterward.

Is your Charlotte roof hiding a flat section?

Plenty are. Mansards, ranch homes with a flat rear addition, split levels with a low roof over the garage. Signs worth checking:

• A ceiling stain upstairs that nobody can trace
• Leaves or small trees growing in the gutters along the back of the house
• Your roof has never been looked at from above
• Upstairs rooms run noticeably hotter than the rest of the house in July

See our Charlotte roofing page for everything we do in the city, or the main roof replacement page for how we run a replacement start to finish.

Keyway has been roofing Charlotte homes since 1975. Call 704-847-7119 or book your free next-day estimate.

Questions about mansard, flat and drone inspected roofs

More of our work: a Matthews roof replacement documented by drone and the full projects page.