When replacement beats repair
Repair is the right answer more often than contractors admit. Replacement is the right answer when one of these is true:
- The damage is spread across slopes rather than concentrated at one penetration. Scattered hail bruising is not a patch job.
- The roof is near the end of its service life anyway — past about eighteen years on architectural shingle in this climate, money spent on repairs is rent rather than investment.
- The shingle has gone brittle. If it cracks instead of flexing when it is lifted, it cannot be worked on without creating new damage.
- There are multiple layers. You cannot assess or repair decking through two generations of shingle.
- An insurance claim has been approved for it. If the carrier has scoped a replacement, taking a repair instead leaves you with an older roof and no second claim.
What a full replacement includes
A replacement is five layers, and the cheap version of this job is cheap because it quietly reuses two or three of them:
- Tear-off down to the deck — every layer, not just the top one.
- Decking inspection and repair. Soft or delaminated sheathing comes out. This is priced per sheet in your estimate before work starts, so there is no negotiation on day two.
- Underlayment across the whole deck, with ice-and-water shield in the valleys and along the eaves.
- Drip edge, starter strip, valley metal, pipe boots and flashing — all new. Reused flashing is the single most common corner cut in this trade.
- Shingle, ridge cap and ventilation. Intake at the eaves and exhaust at the ridge, balanced. Get this wrong and the new roof cooks from underneath.
Our illustrated roof anatomy shows how these stack up.
What the week actually looks like
Day 0 — inspection and estimate. Free, about thirty minutes, with a photo report you keep whether you hire anyone or not.
Materials delivered, usually the day before or the morning of. They land on the driveway; move vehicles.
Day 1 — tear-off and dry-in. The old roof comes off, the decking gets inspected and repaired, and the underlayment goes down so the house is watertight by the end of the day regardless of how far the shingle got.
Day 1–2 — shingle, flashing, ridge and vents. Most single-family homes finish here. Steep, cut-up roofs in West Plano and larger Frisco houses more often run into a third day.
Clean-up and final walk. Magnetic sweep for nails across the lawn and drive — ask for it explicitly, and ask them to do it twice.
It is loud, and you do not need to be home for it, but somebody should be reachable in case the decking turns out worse than expected.
Choosing the shingle
Architectural (laminated) shingle is the North Texas default and what most of these replacements go back on as. Impact-resistant Class 4 is the tier above, costs more up front, and many Texas carriers discount the premium for it — worth asking your agent for the actual figure before deciding.
If your neighbourhood has an HOA, profile and colour range are usually restricted, and in Allen especially the approval step is worth starting early. Full comparison in our guide to 3-tab versus architectural shingle.
What it costs
Most full asphalt replacements in DFW land roughly between $9,000 and $25,000, driven by square count, pitch, complexity and what turns up under the old material. If the damage is storm-related and a claim is approved, the homeowner generally pays their deductible rather than the full figure.
The detail is in our guides on what a roof costs in Texas and when insurance pays for it.