Roofing · New Westminster, BC
Roofing in New Westminster, BC: the oldest housing stock in the region
Roofing Vancouver BC replaces, repairs and inspects roofs across New Westminster — Queen's Park, Sapperton, Brow of the Hill, the West End, Glenbrooke North, Downtown and Queensborough. Shingle, cedar and cedar conversions, composite shake, metal and torch-on flat. WorkSafeBC registered, $5M insured, GAF certified, ICBA and BBB members.
The age of it
Roofing in New Westminster is mostly a question of what is under the shingles.
New Westminster is British Columbia's oldest incorporated city, dating from 1859, and it was the province's first capital. The City's own heritage pages note that generally any structure older than fifty years may have heritage value — which in New Westminster covers a very large share of the housing.
For a roofer that age shows up in three specific ways, none of them cosmetic.
- Steep pitches and complicated roofs. Victorian and Edwardian houses through Queen's Park, Brow of the Hill, the West End and Sapperton carry gables, dormers, turrets, bay projections and long valleys. Steep is safer for shedding water and slower to work on, and the labour lives in the intersections rather than the open field.
- Board decking, not plywood. Houses of this era were sheathed in planks, frequently with gaps, and cedar roofs were laid on deliberately spaced sheathing. You cannot nail a modern shingle assembly to that and expect it to behave, so a full new plywood deck is often part of the job rather than an upsell. This is one of the two questions we field most on quote calls: whether an older house needs a new deck.
- Layers. A century of roofs means a real chance of a second covering already up there. It doubles the tear-off, adds disposal, and hides whatever the deck has been doing underneath.
All three are priced at the free inspection rather than assumed in advance, which is the only honest way to quote a house of this age. The other question we are asked most — why quotes differ so much between companies — usually comes down to whether the other quote accounted for any of the above.
Paperwork
Heritage rules and the City's roof certificate.
The Queen's Park Heritage Conservation Area
The City describes the conservation area as a way to retain the neighbourhood's heritage values while managing change, and says owners may be required to apply for a Heritage Alteration Permit for certain renovations. Whether a change of roof covering falls inside that depends on the property's category and on what you are proposing.
The right order is to ask the City's planning division before the material is ordered, not after the tear-off. We are happy to frame the question, and where a heritage property wants the original look we will talk through cedar and composite shake and the designer asphalt profiles that read as shake from the street.
The Roof Material and Installation Certificate
New Westminster is unusual in publishing a roofing-specific form. Its Roof Material and Installation Certificate certifies that a roof's material and installation comply with the applicable sections of the current edition of the BC Building Code, naming CSA O118.1 for wood shake and shingle and CAN/CSA-A220.0 for concrete tile, and it states that the form is to be completed by both the owner or builder and the contractor to be acceptable.
That is a good thing for a homeowner. It means somebody signs their name to the installation. The City sets out scope and process on its building permits pages, and its heritage pages cover the conservation area. We confirm with the building department before a job starts, and the city permit is included in the quoted price where one is required.
The city, neighbourhood by neighbourhood
A hillside city with a flat island attached.
New Westminster runs from the Fraser River up a steep hill, and then jumps the river to a flat island. Those are two different roofing towns.
Up the hill. Downtown and the Quayside at the bottom, then Brow of the Hill, the West End, Moody Park, Glenbrooke North, Queen's Park, Massey Victory Heights, Connaught Heights and McBride Sapperton climbing away from the water. Character houses and conversions dominate: steep roofs, many planes, heritage detailing, and a lot of houses divided into suites at some point in the last fifty years, which usually added bathroom and kitchen vents through the roof. Every one of those penetrations is a place a roof can leak, and they are where rot is found on about one tear-off in ten.
Queensborough. On the eastern tip of Lulu Island, flat, at river level, behind dikes, with none of the hillside. Older cottages, newer subdivisions and industrial buildings, and a far higher proportion of low-slope roofs. It roofs more like Richmond than like Queen's Park, which means two-ply SBS torch-on work and a drainage survey before anything is re-covered.
Commercial. Columbia Street, the Sapperton and Braid industrial area, Queensborough's industrial lands and the strata buildings through Uptown and the Quayside. Commercial and strata roofing runs on the same membrane systems, scheduled in sections so the building keeps working, with a five-year workmanship warranty rather than the ten that shingle, metal, cedar and composite carry.
Scope
What a New Westminster replacement actually includes.
A quoted price is a package rather than a per-item menu, and on a house of this age it is worth reading what is in it.
Included: removing the existing roofing, ice and water shield and underlayment, the chosen product installed to manufacturer specification, new hip and ridge, existing attic vents replaced with new Duraflo 50 vents sized to the roof at roughly one per five squares, new pipe jacks and flashings, 26-gauge custom flashings and valleys, full clean-up of job debris, licensed and insured crews, the city permit where one is required, and the workmanship warranty.
Priced at the inspection rather than assumed: new decking where the boards will not take a modern assembly or rot is found, a second existing layer to tear off, difficult access, an unusually complex roof, skylights, chimney flashing, gutters and structural repairs. Chimneys deserve a mention of their own here, because New Westminster has a lot of original masonry stacks and they are one of the places a roof most reliably leaks when the counter-flashing was surface-sealed instead of let into the brick.
A standard house takes one to three days. Larger, steeper, cedar, re-deck or winter work takes two to four. If the inspection finds one failed detail rather than a finished roof, it says so and prices the repair instead.
Where we work
Roofers near you, from Queen's Park to Queensborough.
Queen's Park, Downtown and the Quayside, Brow of the Hill, the West End, Moody Park, Glenbrooke North, Massey Victory Heights, Connaught Heights, McBride Sapperton, the Uptown blocks and Queensborough.
Shingle, cedar, composite shake, metal and flat roofs are all installed by the same crews, which matters on a New Westminster house because so many of them carry more than one system: a shingled main roof, a low-slope porch or addition, and a dormer cheek that has to tie the two together.
When a leak is already running, roof leak repair starts from the entry point rather than the stain, and on a plank-decked house those two can be a surprisingly long way apart.
We are WorkSafeBC registered, carry five million dollars of liability insurance, are GAF certified, and belong to the ICBA and the BBB. Over five hundred roofs completed across the region.
Questions
Roofing in New Westminster, plainly answered.
Who does roofing in New Westminster?
We do. Roofing Vancouver BC replaces, repairs and inspects roofs across New Westminster: Queen's Park, Sapperton, Brow of the Hill, the West End, Moody Park, Glenbrooke North, Massey Victory Heights, Connaught Heights, Downtown and Queensborough. Asphalt shingle, cedar and cedar conversions, composite shake, 26-gauge snap-lock metal and two-ply SBS torch-on. WorkSafeBC registered, five million dollars of liability insurance, GAF certified, ICBA and BBB members.
What makes New Westminster roofs different from newer suburbs?
Age, and what sits under the shingles because of it. New Westminster is British Columbia's oldest incorporated city, dating from 1859, and the City notes that generally any structure older than fifty years may have heritage value. That translates into steep pitches, dormers, turrets, complex intersections and long valleys, and into board or plank decking with gaps rather than the continuous plywood a modern roof is nailed to. Both facts change the scope of a replacement.
Does the City require anything specific for a new roof?
For some work it does. New Westminster publishes a Roof Material and Installation Certificate, which the City's building department uses to certify that a roof's material and installation comply with the applicable sections of the current BC Building Code. The form names CSA O118.1 for wood shake and shingle roofs and CAN/CSA-A220.0 for concrete tile, and it is to be completed by both the owner or builder and the contractor to be acceptable. We deal with that paperwork as part of the job.
I live in the Queen's Park Heritage Conservation Area. Does that affect my roof?
It can. The City describes the conservation area as a way to retain the neighbourhood's heritage values while managing change, and says owners may be required to apply for a Heritage Alteration Permit for certain renovations. Whether a roof covering change falls inside that depends on the property's category and on what you are proposing, so it is a question for the City's planning division before the material is ordered rather than after. We will help you frame the question.
Do you still install cedar roofing in New Westminster?
Yes, on the houses where it belongs. Real cedar is a maintenance commitment in this climate, and most older cedar here sits on spaced sheathing rather than a solid deck. Where the look matters we install cedar or Brava composite shake, which is a moulded synthetic shake product rather than any credential of ours. Where it does not, the roof is converted: cedar stripped, a full new plywood deck laid over the old skip sheathing, and an architectural asphalt shingle over that.
What happens if there is already a second layer up there?
It gets torn off, and it changes the price. A second existing layer is one of the items we price at the inspection rather than assume in advance, because it doubles the tear-off, adds disposal and often hides what the deck is really doing. On houses of this age we also expect to find board decking with gaps between the planks, which usually means a new plywood deck before anything else goes down. Rot turns up on roughly one tear-off in ten, almost always around a penetration.
Do you do commercial roofing in New Westminster?
Yes. Columbia Street and the Downtown blocks, the Sapperton and Braid industrial area, the Queensborough industrial lands and the strata buildings through Uptown and the Quayside are all low-slope membrane work. We install a two-ply IKO SBS torch-on system, TP-180 base and TP-250 cap, scheduled in sections so a building keeps operating. The workmanship warranty on flat and torch-on work is five years; manufacturer terms run separately and longer.
Is Queensborough different from the rest of the city?
Completely. Queensborough sits on the eastern tip of Lulu Island, flat and at river level behind dikes, with none of the hillside the rest of New Westminster is built on. The housing is a mix of older cottages, newer subdivisions and industrial buildings, and low-slope roofs are far more common there than they are up the hill. In practical terms it roofs more like Richmond than like Queen's Park.
Next
Get the number for your New Westminster roof.
Type the address and we measure the roof from satellite imagery and price it on the screen. The free inspection turns that into a fixed written price, with the deck, the layers and the heritage question settled first.