Asphalt shingles · Metro Vancouver & the Fraser Valley
Asphalt shingle roofing: the three tiers, and what actually differs between them
Asphalt shingle roofing comes in three tiers: standard architectural, premium, and designer shake-look. All three are laminated shingles, all three go on over the same underlayment, flashings and ventilation, and all three last about twenty-five years in this climate.
What separates them is the toughness of the mat, the granule specification, the depth of the profile and the manufacturer's warranty terms. What does not separate them is anything that keeps water out.
Tier one
Standard architectural: IKO Cambridge and GAF Timberline HDZ.
This is the tier that goes on most Lower Mainland houses, and there is nothing apologetic about it. An architectural shingle is two layers of fibreglass mat laminated together, which gives it thickness, a shadow line and a tab pattern that does not read as a repeating grid from the street.
It replaced the old flat three-tab shingle across the whole market, and for good reason: the extra layer is more material in the weather, a better wind seal, and a roof that looks like a roof rather than a pattern.
IKO Cambridge and GAF Timberline HDZ are the two we install in this tier. Both are laminated architectural shingles with a sealed nailing zone, both come in the colour ranges that suit the housing stock here, and both are backed by a manufacturer's product warranty issued in your name. IKO and GAF publish the full specifications, colour ranges and warranty documents on their own sites, and those documents are the ones that govern — not any summary of them, including this one.
Where this tier is the right answer: a straightforward roof on an open lot with reasonable sun, decent ventilation, and no particular moss problem. Which describes a great many houses in Richmond, Delta, Surrey, Langley and the flatter parts of the valley.
Where it is not: heavily shaded roofs with a chronic algae and moss history, and roofs that take the brunt of a southeast wind funnel. Those are the conditions the next tier exists for.
Tier two
Premium: Malarkey Windsor, Malarkey Vista and IKO Dynasty.
The premium tier is where the shingle itself gets tougher, rather than simply thicker or prettier. It is the tier we steer people towards most often on the wetter, shadier, windier lots in this region.
Malarkey Windsor, Malarkey Vista and IKO Dynasty are what we install here. The differences that matter are in the materials science rather than the appearance, and there are three of them.
- A tougher, more flexible asphalt blend. Standard shingle asphalt hardens with age and cold; a modified blend stays flexible longer, which is what impact and tear resistance actually mean in practice. Each manufacturer publishes an impact rating class for its products, determined by a standardised test, and that class is on the product data sheet.
- Granule specification. The mineral surface is what takes the ultraviolet load, and premium products generally carry a higher granule adhesion specification plus algae-resistant granules. Algae is the cause of the black streaking on north-facing roofs across Metro Vancouver, and resisting it is worth more here than it is in most markets.
- Wind and nailing tolerance. A wider, clearly marked nailing zone gives the installer more room to be exactly right, and a stronger factory seal strip holds the course down through the storms that come off the strait in November.
Malarkey publishes the technical data, ratings and warranty terms for the Windsor and Vista lines on its own site, as IKO does for Dynasty. Read those rather than a sales summary.
Where this tier earns its money: north slopes, shaded lots, anything under conifers, the North Shore, the slopes above Port Moody and Coquitlam, and exposed ridgelines anywhere.
Tier three
Designer shake-look: IKO Armourshake and CertainTeed Presidential Shake TL.
The designer tier is about appearance, and it is honest to say so. These are the shingles people choose when they want a roof that reads as cedar shake from the street without owning a cedar roof.
IKO Armourshake and CertainTeed Presidential Shake TL are what we install. They are heavier and thicker than architectural shingles, built up from more laminated layers, and cut with a deeper and more irregular profile so that the shadow line between courses is pronounced rather than suggested. On a roof with visible planes — a cross-gable, a house with dormers, anything you can see from below and from the side — that depth is the whole point.
They also sit at the top of each manufacturer's warranty structure, with the longest terms and the most generous transferability conditions. Those terms differ between the two products and between manufacturers, so they are worth reading side by side on CertainTeed's and IKO's own technical pages before choosing.
Two practical notes. First, weight: a designer shingle is significantly heavier per square than an architectural one, which is a question to ask about on an older house with a marginal structure, and one we check during the inspection. Second, the comparison to make is not against tier one. It is against Brava composite shake and new cedar, which are the other two ways to get this look, and which sit above it in cost.
This tier comes up most often on the Vancouver west side, in West Vancouver, on the character streets of New Westminster and Burnaby, and on cedar conversions where the owner is attached to the profile they are losing.
The honest version
What actually differs between the tiers — and what does not.
What you are paying more for
- Impact and tear resistance. A tougher mat and a more flexible asphalt blend, rated by a published class on the data sheet.
- Granule and algae treatment. Better adhesion, and algae-resistant granules that slow the black streaking that every shaded roof in this region eventually gets.
- Profile and shadow line. More laminated layers, more thickness, a deeper and more irregular cut. This is most of the jump from tier two to tier three.
- Warranty period and terms. The manufacturer's product warranty runs longer at each tier, with different non-prorated windows and different transferability rules when you sell the house.
What is identical on every tier
- Synthetic underlayment across the deck, not felt
- Peel-and-stick membrane at every penetration, plus eaves and valleys
- Custom 26-gauge flashings and valley metal, bent for your roof
- New Duraflo 50 vents sized to the roof, roughly one per five squares
- New pipe jacks, plumbing and HVAC flashings
- New hip and ridge cap
- Our ten-year workmanship warranty
This is the part worth sitting with. A tier-three shingle over reused flashings and an unventilated attic is a worse roof than a tier-one shingle installed properly. Corner-cutting on flashing details, cheap underlayment and insufficient ventilation are the three things we find behind other roofers' work more than anything else, and none of them is fixed by upgrading the shingle. If a budget has to choose, it should choose the roof under the shingle first.
Our workmanship warranty and the manufacturer's product warranty are two separate documents covering two separate risks. They are never added together into one number.
Lifespan
How long roof shingles last in this climate: about twenty-five years.
Twenty-five years is what we observe regionally across the Lower Mainland, and it is a more useful number than anything printed on a wrapper, because it describes roofs in this rain rather than roofs in a laboratory.
Three things move it, and the shingle tier is not the biggest of them.
Exposure. Environment and Climate Change Canada's published climate normals put annual precipitation near 1,160 mm at Richmond, around 1,505 at Abbotsford, 1,537 at Vancouver Harbour, 1,668 at Chilliwack Airport and above 2,500 at the Capilano station in North Vancouver. A shaded north slope in the wettest of those places grows moss in a fraction of the time the same roof takes on an open lot in the driest, and moss lifts shingle tabs and holds water against the edges.
Ventilation. An attic that does not breathe bakes the shingles from below in summer and condenses household moisture against the deck in winter. This is why two identical roofs installed on the same street in the same week can be five years apart in condition at twenty.
Installation. Nail count, nail placement and exposure are specified by the manufacturer for each product, and installing outside that specification is the most common reason a warranty claim gets declined. It is also completely unverifiable from the ground once the roof is on.
The signs a shingle roof is reaching the end are consistent: granules collecting in the gutters, bald and shiny patches on the south and west slopes, tabs curling or cupping, brittle edges that crack when lifted, and moss established across whole slopes rather than in patches.
Repair or replace
Roof shingles repair, or a shingle roof replacement?
When repairing roof shingles is right
Storm damage to a defined area of a roof with years left in it. One failed flashing, valley or pipe collar. A few tabs lifted or creased by wind. Moss on shingles that are otherwise sound and intact. In all of those cases the field of the roof is still doing its job, and fixing the point of failure is straightforward and long-lasting.
Creased shingles matter as much as missing ones, by the way. A crease breaks the mat even though the shingle is still up there, and that course will leak in the next storm.
Full detail on how we diagnose it is on the roof repair page, including how to read the symptom from what is showing on your ceiling.
When replacing roof shingles is cheaper
Three or more unrelated failures at once — a valley, a vent collar and a wall flashing, say — means the roof is failing as a system rather than at a point. Shingles at or near the twenty-five years they run here, curling and shedding granules away from the leak, mean the next repair is somewhere else and soon. A deck that feels soft underfoot changes the arithmetic completely, because that plywood has to come off either way.
A shingle roof replacement is a full tear-off to the deck, one to three days on a standard home, with everything in the identical list above going back on new. What that involves start to finish is set out on the roof replacement page.
Where we work
Shingle roofing near you, from West Vancouver to Chilliwack.
Which tier suits a house here has more to do with the lot than the postcode, but the pattern across the region is real. Shaded, wet, tree-covered lots on the North Shore, in Anmore, above Port Moody and through Mission and Maple Ridge get more value out of the premium tier. Open, sunny lots in Richmond, Delta, Tsawwassen and much of Surrey and Langley do very well on a correctly installed standard architectural shingle.
We install asphalt shingle roofing across Vancouver, Burnaby, Surrey, Richmond, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, North and West Vancouver, New Westminster, Langley, Delta, Tsawwassen, White Rock, Maple Ridge, Pitt Meadows, Abbotsford, Mission, Chilliwack and Anmore. We are WorkSafeBC registered, carry five million dollars of liability insurance, are GAF certified, belong to the ICBA and the BBB, and have completed more than 500 roofs.
Questions
Asphalt shingles, plainly answered.
What are the three tiers of asphalt shingle?
Standard architectural, premium, and designer shake-look. We install IKO Cambridge and GAF Timberline HDZ in the standard tier; Malarkey Windsor, Malarkey Vista and IKO Dynasty in the premium tier; and IKO Armourshake and CertainTeed Presidential Shake TL in the designer shake-look tier. All three are laminated architectural shingles rather than the old flat three-tab, and all three go on over the same underlayment, flashings and ventilation.
What is the difference between architectural and designer shingles?
Weight and profile. An architectural shingle is two layers of mat laminated together, which gives it dimension and a shadow line a flat three-tab never had. A designer shake-look shingle adds more layers, more thickness and a deeper, more irregular cut, so that from the street it reads as a cedar shake roof rather than a shingle roof. The waterproofing principle is identical; what you are paying for is depth, texture and the manufacturer's longest warranty terms.
How long do asphalt shingles last in Vancouver?
About twenty-five years is what we observe regionally, across tiers and across the Lower Mainland. Exposure moves that figure more than the product does: a shaded, north-facing slope under conifers on the North Shore ages faster than a sunny, open slope in Tsawwassen. Ventilation moves it too, because an unvented attic bakes the shingles from below in summer and condenses moisture against the deck in winter.
Is a premium shingle worth the extra cost?
It depends on what is limiting the roof. If your roof is shaded and mossy, algae-resistant granules and a tougher mat earn their money. If your roof is exposed to hard southeast wind, the wider nailing zone and stronger seal earn it. If your roof is a simple, sunny, well-ventilated slope, a standard architectural shingle correctly installed will do very well, and the money is better spent on the flashings, the underlayment and the ventilation underneath it.
What actually differs between the shingle tiers?
Four things: the impact and tear resistance of the mat and the asphalt blend, the granule specification including algae resistance, the profile and shadow line, and the manufacturer's warranty period and transferability terms. What does not differ is the roof underneath. Synthetic underlayment, peel-and-stick at penetrations, custom 26-gauge flashings and correctly sized ventilation are standard on every tier we install.
Do you repair roof shingles, or only replace them?
Both. Roof shingles repair is worth doing when the failure is local and the field around it is sound: storm damage to a defined area, one failed flashing or valley, a cracked pipe collar. Once several unrelated things are failing at once, or the shingles two metres from the leak are curling and shedding granules, a repair is buying months and a shingle roof replacement is the cheaper answer.
What causes the black streaks on roof shingles?
Algae, not dirt and not mould. It grows on the limestone filler in the shingle, it prefers the damp and shaded slopes that this region is full of, and it is cosmetic rather than structural in its early stages. Shingles with algae-resistant granules are formulated to slow it down; how long the manufacturer warrants that resistance is one of the things that differs between tiers, and it is stated on the product's own data sheet.
Can I mix shingle tiers on one house?
You can, and occasionally it makes sense, for example a designer shake-look on a prominent front slope with a standard architectural behind it. We will price it if you want it. Most owners decide against it once they see the transition line in person, and on a roof with visible planes from several angles it rarely looks deliberate.
What warranty comes with an asphalt shingle roof?
Ten years on our workmanship, the same as our metal, cedar and composite work. The manufacturer's product warranty is a separate document with its own term, its own conditions and its own transferability rules, and those terms differ between the tiers. We register it in your name and give you the exact wording rather than folding it into our number.
Do roofing shingles need a specific nailing pattern?
Yes, and it is the most consequential invisible detail on a shingle roof. Every manufacturer publishes a nail count, a nail placement zone and an exposure for each product, and installing outside that specification is the most common reason a manufacturer declines a warranty claim. It is also unverifiable from the ground once the roof is finished, which is why it matters who is on the roof.
Next
Find out what a new shingle roof would cost.
Type your address and we measure the roof from satellite imagery, then price it in each of the three tiers against what is up there now, so you can see the gap rather than guess at it. The number is on the screen before we ask you for anything.