Roofing in Cottage Grove, Wisconsin

A Village That Grew Eightfold, And What That Did To Its Roofs

Cottage Grove takes its name from a settler’s cottage standing in a grove of trees near the village site, which is about as unglamorous an origin as Wisconsin offers. For most of its history it was a small crossroads village. Then Madison came east.

The numbers are worth reading slowly. 888 residents in 1980. 1,131 in 1990. Then 4,059 by 2000 — a 258 per cent increase in a decade. 6,192 in 2010, 7,303 in 2020, and an estimated 8,930 by 2025. A village that was smaller than Ixonia inside living memory is now larger than Waterloo and Juneau combined.

Which means almost the entire building stock of this village is newer than 1990, and a very large share of it is newer than 2000. There is essentially no pre-war housing to speak of and very little post-war. Cottage Grove is a village of first and second roofs, and that is unusual enough to change how we approach it.

The 1990s and early-2000s cohort is at or past the end of its first covering now. Those roofs went on with a four-nail pattern, felt underlayment, and ridge vent that frequently had no matching soffit intake — the combination that produces a thirty-year shingle failing at twenty-two. The later cohort, built from roughly 2010, is young on paper and mostly fine, but it has already been through several hail seasons and is worth having on record.

One thing to get right before anything else: there are two Cottage Groves. The Village of Cottage Grove and the Town of Cottage Grove are separate jurisdictions with separate requirements, and a Cottage Grove mailing address does not tell you which one you are in. We check the parcel before we quote, because a contractor who assumes gets sent away on the morning of the job. It is the same trap as the City and Town of Watertown, and we deal with it every week.

Do You Need A Roofing Permit In Cottage Grove?

Yes. The Village of Cottage Grove requires a permit to re-roof — Village of Cottage Grove residential building permit fee schedule, line 27: “Re-roofs, Siding, Windows & Doors (Same Size) — $65.00” We pull it before the crew arrives and it is a line item on your estimate rather than a surprise; a permit pulled by the homeowner makes the homeowner responsible for code compliance on somebody else’s work. The published fee is $65. Work started without a permit is charged double the inspection fee.

Questions go to the building department, through its forms and permits page. The answer differs town to town because SPS 320.09(2)(b) leaves permits for alterations and repairs to local ordinance.

The August 2006 Storm, And Why Two Hundred Claims Matters To You

On August 24, 2006 a thunderstorm put 1.75 inch hail over Cottage Grove and the National Weather Service recorded the outcome plainly: large hail damaged many homes and vehicles, resulting in an estimated 200 claims. The same storm brought 64 mile an hour winds that put a tree onto a house.

Two hundred claims in a village that had around 4,500 residents at the time is close to saturation, and it tells you something useful twenty years on. If your house here predates 2006, it has almost certainly either been re-roofed off that claim or carries damage from it that nobody claimed. Both are worth knowing about, and they lead to different conversations.

If it was re-roofed on a claim: that work was done at volume, in a hurry, by whoever had capacity in a village suddenly needing two hundred roofs. We find the signature of that regularly — new shingles over reused flashing, layovers rather than tear-offs, and ridge vent cut in without opening the soffits. A roof from 2006 done that way is at the end of its life now and may have been leaking at a chimney for years.

If it was not claimed: the mat under the granules has been cracked since 2006 and the roof has been quietly running down ever since. There is no claim available for a storm that old. What there is, is an honest answer about how much life is left, which is worth having before February rather than during it.

What A Builder-Grade Roof Actually Came With

In a village where most houses went up after 2000, nearly every original roof is a builder-grade roof. That is not an insult — it is a description of a specification chosen to a budget across a whole subdivision, and it is useful to know what it means before you replace it.

What it usually included. A serviceable architectural shingle with a long printed warranty. A four-nail fastening pattern, which is the manufacturer’s minimum rather than its high-wind pattern. Felt underlayment. Ridge vent along the top. Aluminum drip edge, sometimes.

What it usually did not. Ice-and-water shield beyond the minimum at the eaves, if at all. Soffit intake sized to match the ridge vent. Metal-lined valleys. And on many of them, no starter course at the rakes — just cut shingles, which is where wind gets its first purchase.

None of that was cutting corners by the standards of the day. All of it is why a thirty-year shingle is coming off at twenty-two, and all of it is cheap to fix properly the second time round. A six-nail pattern, synthetic underlayment, membrane at the eaves and valleys, and opened-up soffit intake add a modest amount to a replacement and are most of the difference between getting the rated life and repeating the first roof.

When you compare quotes here, those four items are the ones to ask each contractor to price explicitly. A quote that does not mention them is quoting you the same roof you already have.