Tile roof vs flat roof (Phoenix, Tucson: how much, houses, neighborhood)

[Daisypups]

We will be looking at houses next week and some have the traditional Spanish tile roofs and some with flat roofs with more of an adobe look. From what I see online the tile roofs are beautiful but add to the cost of the house and the flat roof houses are unnoticeable but a little cheaper and nice too. One house we are looking at has a flat roof and we wonder if they wear out faster, subject to more leaks and repairs. If money were no object which would you choose? Thanks!

[WilmaWildcat]

Rosie Romero has a desert home column every Sunday in the Arizona Daily Star; week before last I remember he addressed a roof question. I think he's based in Phoenix but answers a lot of Tucson questions. (I highly recommend subscribing to the ADS; they do an excellent job of covering local news and events and have been doing it for about 125 years IIRC.) Here's the Q & A and the link to that week's column with all the Q&A's. If you go to the bottom of the article you will find a list of key words; if you click on Rosie Romero, you will get a list of his columns. They also have weekly Tucson gardening columns.

Should I put foam on my low-pitched roof?

Q: I have an older house located in Central Tucson. The roof isn’t leaking, but the asphalt shingles blow off now and then; I’m always picking them up. I think that I’m now missing about 35 shingles off the roof. It’s a low-pitched roof, not a flat roof. The pitch is about 2:12. But I’m wondering if they can apply foam to low-pitched roof?

A: Call a licensed roofing company and have them take a look at your current shingled roof. The roofers can give you an assessment of what you need to do next. When you have that low a pitch for your roof, they may have to do something to the underlayment before putting on more shingles. So foam may be a better choice, even though you don’t have a completely flat roof.
Many homeowners in Tucson, however, seem reluctant to use foam, even though I think it’s often the best possible solution for the flat roofs that are so popular in Tucson. That pitch rating of 2:12, by the way, is a ratio that measures how much slope there is in roofs.

[Daisypups]

Wilma Wildcat, thank you so much! I have actually thought about doing this. After we get back from our Tucson trip (we leave next Wed!) we'll know better of whether we will move out or not. So far, it's lookin' good! Oh, and thanks to you we'll be staying at the Arizona Inn for one night before we go north. Can't wait!

[beTucsonan]

Originally Posted by Daisypups

If money were no object which would you choose? Thanks!

If money were no object, I would choose a flat roof, have it prepared professionally and then put up some shade and use that space as a rooftop deck, but that's just me.

I don't know whether flat roofs wear out faster, but I can tell you that the last flat-roof house I had was a 163-year old house in Pittsburgh, where it rains heavily and often, and I didn't experience any trouble. The key to any type of roof is keeping it maintained properly. If you don't do that the price to fix/replace a tile roof will probably be much higher than a flat roof or asphalt roof, and a large part of my preference against tile roofs is my ability to personally handle things like re-coating every couple of years.

[Chuck_G]

Hi Daisypups,
When we lived in Tucson we had a house with a flat roof and had no problems with leaks. Flat is sort of a misnomer as it had a very slight pitch so all of the water would run off on one side, but it wasn't big enough so you would notice walking on it. We had it sealed, I think they call it 'cool coat' which was a silver sort coating they put down to keep it from leaking and reflect heat. Like BajaAZ, I thought about turning the section over my carport into a rooftop patio, but never got around to it. That being said, tile roofs are beautiful.

[tumamoc]

We have a "flat roof". It is foam sealed with a white rubberized coating. These types of roofs need to be resealed every few years. With the constant sunshine, they eventually start to get cracks and seams. If small enough, these cracks can be patched up pretty easily by the homeowner with patching cement and reinforcing grid fabric. You have to be wary of ponded areas. If cracks are present within them, that rainwater is going to find its way inside the house.

[WilmaWildcat]

Daisypups, don't forget to get your complimentary Häagen-Dazs sundaes around the pool in the evenings. (In winter, it's English tea afternoons in the library by the fireplace.) I hope you have a care-free, enjoyable stay. If I got my ducks in a row, I'd fix up my photo hosting at google so I could post some pix from my stay the first week in June.

[WilmaWildcat]

Oh, yes, I forgot to mention our own experience with a flat roof. We had one when we lived in Sam Hughes (a Tucson central neighborhood just east of the university); it is coincidentally the source of one of our rather outrageous and fun memories of a younger and stupider time. Here in Chicagoland you have to make sure the gutters don't have leaves in them; and there in Tucson you have to make sure leaves don't build up on the roof. Sam Hughes has history, and there are some huge, old trees and shrubs there; we had some ancient oleanders (native to Sardinia, btw) which can get taller than one-story roofs. We learned the hard way they were building up on the roof when we woke up at 3 a.m. one summer monsoon night to the sound of water coming into the bedroom. We rushed up there, and the water was knee deep while we were unblocking the drainage holes. After that we had a good laugh and ate way-past-midnight snacks in front of a cable TV movie. :-) So depending on where you live, you might want to keep an eye on that.