What Our Warranty Actually Covers

What A Roofing Warranty In Wisconsin Actually Covers

A roofing warranty in Wisconsin is two promises: the shingle manufacturer’s warranty on the product — long, but conditional on ventilation and installation to its instructions — and the workmanship warranty on the installation, ours five years and transferable, which covers what actually leaks: flashing, fasteners, boots, valleys.

Two warranties, and they cover different things; homeowners are routinely sold one as though it were both.

The shingle manufacturer warranty covers the shingles themselves — a defect in the product. It is long, often headlined as “lifetime”, and it is also the one least likely to ever be needed, because manufacturing defects in asphalt shingles are rare. In Wisconsin it is also conditional: every major manufacturer requires the roof to be installed to its instructions and the attic to be ventilated, and an inspector who finds blocked soffits has a reason to decline it.

The workmanship warranty on the roof covers the installation, which is what actually goes wrong. Ours is 5-year workmanship warranty. Almost every leak on a roof under fifteen years old is workmanship — a flashing detail, a nailing pattern, a reused pipe boot — not the shingle.

Why the manufacturer’s warranty cares how many nails we used: the state code sets four fasteners per strip shingle as the floor and adopts the manufacturer’s specification where it says otherwise — SPS 321.28(3), quoted in full on the replacement page. For the high-wind rating most architectural shingles carry, the manufacturer says six, high-nailed shingles are excluded, and an inspector who finds four nails through the wrong line has a reason to decline a claim on the material. The workmanship has to meet the instructions for the manufacturer’s promise to hold.

What The Warranty Does Not Cover

We would rather write this down than have the conversation on a ladder in February.

Storm damage after installation is an insurance matter, not a warranty one — no roofer warrants against hail, and the claims section is where that goes. Damage from anybody else working on the roof, from satellite dishes or from foot traffic is excluded. So is damage caused by a structural problem underneath, or by ice damming where the attic insulation and ventilation are outside the scope we installed. Failure to keep gutters clear is excluded where it causes water to back up under the eaves.

Everything on that list is stated in your contract, before you sign it, not discovered afterward — as ATCP 110.05 requires of a home improvement contract in this state.