Birmingham, AL Roof Repair, Replacement & Chimney Work
Residential and commercial roofing across Jefferson County. Free inspections in Birmingham, Homewood, Hoover, Bessemer and Trussville.
- ✓Licensed Alabama residential roofer, fully insured
- ✓We inspect every flue, not just the shingles
- ✓Free roof inspection with dated photographs of every slope
- ✓Written workmanship warranty on every replacement
Birmingham Roof Pros is a licensed, insured roofing contractor in Birmingham, Alabama, handling roof replacement, roof leak repair, storm and hail damage, roof inspections and commercial low-slope work across Jefferson, Shelby, St. Clair, Blount and Walker counties. We install architectural laminate shingles, standing seam metal, clay tile, and TPO, EPDM and modified bitumen membranes. We work Birmingham, Hoover, Homewood, Vestavia Hills, Mountain Brook, Bessemer, Trussville and the smaller Jefferson County cities around them.
Repair work covers step and counter-flashing, valley metal, pipe boots, ridge and soffit ventilation, skylights, K-style aluminum gutters and downspouts, fascia and soffit, and emergency tarping. Every replacement is torn off to the deck, the plank sheathing is re-secured with ring-shank fasteners, and field shingles go down with six nails each in the manufacturer's nailing zone.
What we do differently is the chimney. This city was built on Warrior field coal and its houses burned it, which is why so much of the pre-war stock carries tall brick stacks whose flues serve nothing. We settle that question before quoting the covering, and we will tell you when taking a dead stack down beats rebuilding it. Free inspections and written scopes.
Why Birmingham Chooses Birmingham Roof Pros
- ✓We settle the chimney before we price the covering, because on a pre-war Birmingham house that is the item that moves the number
- ✓Every dead flue gets three priced options — rebuild and recrown, cap and keep, or remove below the deck — and we say which we would choose
- ✓Nothing comes down until the fuel question is answered in writing, and a live appliance is re-vented by a licensed mechanical contractor first
- ✓Flashing is two pieces of fabricated metal cut into a raked bed joint, never one piece bedded in sealant
- ✓No overlays, no coatings over masonry, and no coating sold on a residential shingle roof at all
- ✓We will quote the brick alone and walk away from the reroof when the covering still has years left in it
About Birmingham Roof Pros in Birmingham, AL
Birmingham Roof Pros works Birmingham and the surrounding Jefferson County cities, along with the nearer parts of Shelby, St. Clair, Blount and Walker counties. Most of what we do is ordinary and we do it properly: tear off to the deck, fasten to the rating, flash with metal rather than sealant, and ventilate so the mat is not cooking from below.
The local part is the masonry. Birmingham exists because iron ore, coal and limestone sit together here, and the coal that fed the furnaces also heated the houses. That history is still standing on the roofs as tall brick stacks with two, three or four flues, almost none of them connected to anything. We settle that before we price a covering, because it is the item that most often decides the number.
Do not hire us if you want a coating over a leaking crown, an overlay on an existing layer, or a contractor who will absorb your deductible. We will not do any of those. And if your covering has ten good years left and only the chimney is failing, we would rather quote the brick alone and lose the bigger job than sell you a roof you did not need.
Our Roofing Services in Birmingham, AL
Roof Replacement
A full replacement on a pre-war house here is not one decision. It is the covering, and then it is the brick stack standing through it.
Roof Leak Repair
Start where the water gets in, not where the ceiling is stained. In this city those are usually different rooms, because the most common entry point on an older house is a brick stack in the middle of the plane and water travels along a rafter before it drops.
Storm Damage Restoration
Central Alabama storms take the tallest thing on the house first. On the pre-war stock that is a brick stack standing three or four feet above the ridge with nothing bracing it, and it comes down across the slope rather than off the side.
Hail Damage Roofing
Hail reaches Jefferson County most springs, but far less of what gets called hail damage here is actually hail. We would rather tell you that on the first visit than help you file a claim that gets denied and then sits in your loss history for five years.
Wind Damage Roofing
Wind failure on an older Birmingham house starts at the stack, not at the rake. A brick chimney standing proud of the ridge throws a pressure shadow downwind, and the shingles in it lift and reseal a few thousand times before one stops resealing.
Roof Inspections
Our inspection has an extra stop that most do not: the inside of every flue. A mirror and a light at the top of the stack tell you whether the flue is lined, whether it is holding water, and whether anything is still connected below.
Asphalt Shingle Roofs
Asphalt covers the overwhelming majority of roofs in this county and it should. Our advice on it is unfashionable: buy a mid-weight architectural laminate, buy it in the standard line, and put the difference into the brick and the metal it has to meet.
Metal Roofing
We install standing seam and we like it, and we will still talk a fair number of Birmingham homeowners out of it. The reason is the same thing that makes this a good roofing city to work in: the number of things sticking up through the plane.
Tile Roofing
Clay tile is rarer here than in the Sun Belt cities, but it is not rare in the neighborhoods that matter. The 1920s money in Redmont, Forest Park and the early Mountain Brook villages bought Mediterranean and Tudor houses, and many still wear their original tile.
Flat & Low-Slope Roofing
Low slope on a Birmingham house is rarely the main roof. It is the porch, the back addition and the sleeping porch that got enclosed some time after the war.
Roof Coatings & Sealing
Here is the page where the honest answer is usually no. We apply coatings and we apply them well.
Roof Ventilation
Before we add a single vent to an older house here, we close the flues. An open unlined flue is a two-foot-square hole running from your attic to the sky.
Skylights
We fit skylights and we turn down more skylight work than we take. Take a pre-war Birmingham house with plank decking, rafters at wide spacing and a stack already through the plane.
Gutters & Downspouts
Gutters here fail for a reason that has little to do with gutters. Birmingham houses sit on hillsides and on brick or stone foundations.
Fascia & Soffit Repair
The eave is the intake side of the whole ventilation system, and on Birmingham's older stock it is usually the part that has been quietly deleted. Tongue-and-groove board soffits with no vents cut, or vinyl panels installed over the boards without opening them, both look finished and both breathe nothing.
Chimney Flashing & Stack Work
This is the page the rest of the site reasons from. Birmingham was built to burn coal and the houses burned it too.
Emergency Roof Tarping
Tarping in this metro has one complication that most places do not: a fair share of the emergencies involve masonry, and you cannot make a roof safe by covering something that is still leaning. The first thing we do on arrival is decide whether anything overhead is unstable.
Commercial Roofing
Downtown Birmingham has an unusual concentration of early steel-framed masonry commercial buildings, because this city could make the steel and had the money to build tall early. The result on a low-slope roof is the same argument as on a bungalow, at four stories and with more water above it.
Insurance Claim Help
The most common thing we see go wrong on a claim here is not the roof. It is a chimney written out of the scope.
Commercial Roofing in Birmingham and Across Jefferson County, AL
We roof and maintain downtown office and loft buildings, retail along the main corridors, medical and dental suites, restaurants, warehouses and light industrial space, houses of worship, schools and multi-building apartment communities. Birmingham's older commercial stock is steel-framed masonry with tall parapets, and its industrial buildings around Ensley, Fairfield and the Bessemer corridor carry slag-surfaced built-up roofs and abandoned process flues. We survey the perimeter and the penetrations first, then the field.
- ✓60 and 80 mil TPO, EPDM and two-ply SBS-modified bitumen systems
- ✓Polyiso to the specified R-value, with tapered packages where drainage is the real problem
- ✓Core cuts and moisture readings before any recover proposal is written
- ✓Base flashing turned up the wall with through-wall or reglet counterflashing above it
- ✓Coping replacement with continuous cleats and fabricated corners
- ✓Abandoned flues and process penetrations cut back and permanently closed
- ✓Tightened fastening patterns at corners and perimeters for uplift
- ✓Phased work with a nightly dry-in, and twice-yearly maintenance with a photo log
Recent Projects Across Jefferson County and the Birmingham district
How It Works
- Free Inspection, Roof and Flue. We walk every plane we can stand on safely, pole-camera the rest, and check the inside of every flue with a mirror and a light. You get dated photographs on a slope diagram, a remaining-life figure for each slope, and a separate figure for the masonry.
- The Stack Decision. We tell you what is still connected to each flue, then price all the honest options: rebuild and recrown, cap and keep, or remove below the deck and shingle over. If a gas appliance still vents into it, that appliance gets re-vented by a licensed mechanical contractor before anything comes down.
- A Written Scope With Real Lines. The proposal names the shingle and its wind class, the underlayment, the flashing metal and gauge, the fastening pattern, the ventilation net free area and the masonry work, each priced separately. Two bids written that way can actually be compared.
- Tear-Off, Detail, Clean-Up. Landscaping and gutters get covered, the roof comes off to the deck, soft boards are replaced and gapped ones plated. Flashings are fabricated, not folded on the roof. We roll the yard and drive with a magnet twice and photograph the finished roof before we leave.
What Birmingham Customers Say
Two companies quoted a full roof. These guys got on the ladder, showed me photos of a cracked crown and told me the shingles had eight years left. They rebuilt the top of the chimney and reflashed it for a fraction of the other bids. No leak since.
Nobody had ever suggested just taking the chimney out. Nothing had vented into it since my grandmother lived here. They pulled it below the roof, framed and decked the hole and shingled over it during the reroof. One less thing on the house to worry about.
After the spring storms I was told I had hail damage. They marked test squares, walked me through what was actually blistering and what was hail, and said the shingles were fine but the chase cover was shot. New stainless cover, no claim, no drama.
The written scope named the shingle, the wind class, the gauge of the flashing metal and the ventilation area, all priced separately. It was the only bid I could actually compare against the others. Crew showed up when they said and left the yard clean.
Service Areas
Birmingham Roof Pros serves Birmingham, AL and surrounding communities including:
Frequently Asked Questions
My chimney has not been used in years. Do I have to keep it?
No, and on a lot of Birmingham houses you should not. If nothing vents into the flue, taking the brick down below the sheathing, framing the opening and shingling over it is usually cheaper than rebuilding the top section and reflashing it, and it removes the leak point for good. The one condition is fuel: if a furnace or gas water heater still vents into that flue, it gets re-vented by a licensed mechanical contractor first.
Why do so many older houses in Jefferson County have several flues?
Because they were heated room by room with coal from the Warrior field, and later converted piecemeal to gas. A house built before the war often has a fireplace flue, a heater flue and a kitchen flue gathered into one corbelled stack. The Census Bureau's American Community Survey counts 30,491 housing units in Jefferson County built in 1939 or earlier, so this is a large share of the older stock, not an oddity.
How long should a roof last in Birmingham, Alabama?
Twenty to twenty-five years from a mid-weight architectural laminate is fair in this climate. Shaded north slopes run longer, west-facing planes with nothing over them run shorter, and poor intake ventilation takes several years off any of them. The masonry runs on a completely separate clock, which is why our reports give the slopes one number and the stack another.
Do I need impact-rated shingles here?
Usually not, and we will not push them. Hail reaches Jefferson County but not on the annual schedule the hail belt sees, and Alabama's mandatory insurance credits are built around wind-resistant construction rather than impact class. On an exposed west plane with a documented history the upgrade earns its money. Otherwise the same spend does more good in flashing, fastening and ventilation.
Is a roof permit required in Birmingham?
The City of Birmingham enforces its own adopted technical code and issues building permits through its inspection services, and requirements differ across Jefferson County's other municipalities. We confirm with the jurisdiction your address actually sits in before scheduling, and we state on the proposal whether a permit is being pulled and who is pulling it, rather than leaving it to you to discover afterwards.
Can you match the brick if my chimney needs rebuilding?
Usually, and it is worth the effort. Local brick from the pre-war kilns has a color and a size that modern stock does not reproduce exactly, so we source salvaged brick where the visible faces demand it and use new stock below the roof line where nobody sees it. Mortar is matched for color and specified soft enough not to be harder than the brick it holds.