Roofs tend to look great at installation. The big questions are how long will the roof hold up? How will the company respond if there is an issue? This review describes our experiences with Cahill roofing. Our interactions have not measured up to his motto of with "honesty, integrity, and top-quality craftsmanship." Our interactions had three strikes - he was defensive before looking at the work, he denied there was an issue when he inspected it, and he had no interest in discussing what an independent analysis of his work showed.
Nineteen years ago, Mark Cahill replaced and installed the entire roof of our house including rafters, plywood, shingles, vents, etc... The roof had a couple of significant leaks since installation. Mark Cahill was relatively cooperative during the first leak at around the ten-year mark. He did the repair for an additional charge. During the most recent known leak, which independent professionals have stated has likely been going on for a long period of time, his approach changed drastically. We lost electricity on one-side of our house and after three visits from our electrician a leak in the attic was discovered. Our electrician concluded that this was the likely cause for our power outage and told us that we should get in touch with a roofer. We contacted Cahill immediately. During the initial call, before even coming to the house, he blamed the water in our attic on everything from a humidifier that only runs for a few hours over night in the winter, to the bathroom vent, as well as the roof angles. When he did come to the house to inspect the issue from the inside, he decided there wasn't enough air flow coming through the attic vents (which he could've set up properly when he rebuilt the roof initially) and stated that our granite chimney is impossible to make water tight. He seemed particularly fixated upon our granite chimney being a challenge and was unwilling to commit to the possibility that there was an actual leak in the roof. (If he is so intimidated by granite chimneys then why did he accept work he is unable to perform correctly?) He came back a second time to investigate the roof itself and concluded that the issue was chimney pointing.
It was pretty obvious to my wife and I that there was a leak and you can't fix what is not acknowledged. We decided an independent opinion was the best path forward to evaluate our roof. We asked Nick at NJP Contracting to evaluate our roof with a roofer he trusts, Quinn at Eco Pro Roofing. Nick has helped us for years with multiple properties and his work consistently holds up really well. They found significant issues with the setup of the "cricket box", which connects the roof to the chimney. The cricket box had two primary issues - the angles were too shallow and the flashing was incorrectly setup. Specifically, the flashing had two main issues: it went under the shingles as opposed to on top of the shingles and there was no channel put into the granite for a uniform interface between the roof and chimney. Not surprisingly, these two issues led to water getting under the shingles destroying the ply underneath.
I called Cahill to discuss what the independent review found and to get his thoughts. I was hoping to negotiate a fix. Instead, he told us he had plenty of work and was not interested in repairing the work - we should go through someone else to repair his poor craftsmanship. Eco Pro roofing ended up repairing the damage and after two days of heavy rain it was apparent water wasn't getting into the house anymore. They replaced a significant amount of plywood, properly angled the cricket box, and installed the flashing in a way that could handle the amounts of water needed. read more