Roof Inspection in Silver Spring, MD: What We Check on an Older House

What sits under an older Silver Spring roof

The Silver Spring Shopping Center opened in 1938, and by the 1950s the area was the second-busiest retail market between Baltimore and Richmond, with a lot of housing built to match. A house from those years usually has plank decking instead of plywood, original galvanized metal in the valleys, a cut-up roofline with dormers, and an attic that never had enough intake at the soffits.

None of that shows from the street. The shingles on top may only be the second or third roof the house has had, and the problems tend to live in the layers underneath.

On the roof: the shade checks

We walk each slope where it is safe to walk and photograph the field shingles, the granule condition, the ridge and hip caps, every valley, the flashing at each chimney, dormer and wall, the pipe boots and the metal at the gutter line. Under a heavy canopy a few of those get a closer look:

• North slopes that stay damp long enough to grow moss, which holds water against the shingle.
• Valleys packed with leaves, where water backs up instead of running off.
• Shingles scuffed or broken where branches rub in the wind.
• Impact marks or cracked tabs where limbs have come down in a summer storm.
• Old valley metal that has rusted through under the shingles at its edges.

Four creeks run west to east through Silver Spring, Rock Creek, Sligo Creek, Long Branch and Northwest Branch, each wrapped in parkland. Roofs near them stay shaded and damp, which is why the moss and valley checks matter more here than on an open lot.

At the chimney and the dormers

Older houses carry older flashing. Chimneys get reflashed over the decades, often with sealant over metal that has already moved, and dormer walls meet the roof at step flashing that may be original. We look at each joint where the roof meets masonry or siding, because that is where water gets in on a roof whose shingles still look fine.

In the attic: the deck and the airflow

Then we go inside. In the attic we check for daylight through the sheathing, dark staining around nails, rusted fasteners, matted insulation, mold on the underside of the deck, and whether the bath fans vent outside or just into the attic. On a plank deck the gaps between boards and any soft or stained boards get noted, because they decide how much decking work a future replacement needs.

Ventilation gets measured on the same visit. A good share of the roofs we see that failed early failed because nothing pulled air in at the soffit. That matters in winter too: Beltsville, about 5 miles away, averages roughly 16 inches of snow a year in NOAA's 1991 to 2020 normals, and a warm attic melts that snow from below so it refreezes at the cold eave. Our guide to ice dams on Maryland roofs explains what that does.

What you get at the end

You see every photo, on your phone or laptop, and hear plainly what the roof needs: nothing yet, a repair, or a replacement. If the roof has years left, that is the answer. If a storm caused damage, we document it, and if you file a claim we write the scope in Xactimate, the estimating software insurers price from. Your carrier decides coverage.

Related reading

For dark stains on a shaded roof, see black streaks on your roof. If water is already coming in, start with what to do when your roof is leaking.