Reading for Austin roofs
The Austin roofing blog, for homes and small buildings
The articles below cover the questions behind the first call about a roof in Austin: what moves the price of a new roof, where the "25 percent rule" people quote actually comes from, how a metal roof compares to a shingle one, what hail does to a surface, and the time of year worth thinking about for a tear-off.
Every guide
Prices and deciding
A roof price in Austin is set after a look at the roof. The size, the pitch and the shape of the roof set the base; the number of layers of covering to tear off, the condition of the deck under the covering and the covering chosen are what move the number from there. Austin's wildfire-area rule can also change what the covering has to be in a given area. The articles below pull the drivers apart and sort out the common rule-of-thumb number that comes up when deciding between a repair and a full tear-off.
Materials
The shingle makers' trade group calls asphalt the most popular residential covering in North America;1 the metal makers' groups answer the common questions about rain noise, fire rating and panel movement in temperature. Most metal roofing carries a Class A fire rating,2 the metal roofing industry's homeowner group says. The article below sets the two next to each other, line by line.
Storms
Travis County carries 274 hail reports of 1 inch or larger from 1996 to mid-2026,3 216 of them in March, April or May. The Weather Service calls March through May Austin's severe weather season.4 The storm articles cover what hail does to a shingle, a tile and a metal panel, what a roofer looks for after a storm, and what the February 2021 storm and the 2023 ice storm left on Austin roofs.
Sources
- Asphalt Roofing Manufacturers Association (ARMA), Asphalt Shingle Product and Test Standards
- Metal Roofing Alliance (MRA), Fire Performance (metalroofing.com)
- NOAA NCEI Storm Events Database, bulk details files, Travis County, Texas (counts made by summarize-stormevents.mjs from the saved NOAA rows)
- NWS Austin/San Antonio, Austin Climate Summary
Need a repair instead?
If a shingle has lifted, a pipe boot has split or a brown ring is spreading on a bedroom ceiling, the service pages are the better starting point than one of the articles. Every roofing job we take on is sorted on one page, grouped by what the roof actually needs: repairs and leaks, replacement and new roofs, or storm and inspection work. For a roof opened to the weather, start there instead of here, and for a planned look on a roof that isn't actively leaking, see a roof inspection.
Call (512) 515-9559 with what the roof is doing, or write the question down on get in touch.