Canton, OH Roof Pros: Roof Replacement, Leak Repair & Box Gutters
Expert residential and commercial roofing services across Stark County. Free inspection, written scope, no pressure.
- Ohio licenses no roofers at state level, so ask every bidder for city registration and current insurance
- Free inspection that includes opening and photographing the cornice trough
- Edge work and field work priced on separate lines so two bids can be compared
- Written workmanship warranty on every replacement
Our Roofing Services in Canton, OH
Roof Replacement
A Canton replacement gets priced from the edge inward. On many of the houses built during the Timken and Hoover payroll years, the shingle plane does not stop at a fascia board.
Roof Leak Repair
Where the stain sits tells us most of what we need before we go up. The classic Canton call is not a wet patch in the middle of a ceiling.
Storm Damage Restoration
After a line of storms crosses Stark County we get two kinds of call, and they need opposite answers. One is a roof that was fine on Monday and is not fine on Tuesday.
Hail Damage Roofing
Hail inspections here run in two passes, because a Canton house has two different metal assemblies at risk and adjusters routinely scope only one of them. The field of shingles is the obvious one.
Wind Damage Roofing
Wind does not start in the middle of a roof. It finds an edge, gets beneath it and works its way in, which is why the first course above a built-in gutter is the most important shingle on a Canton house and the one most often installed badly.
Roof Inspections
An inspection that only looks at shingles passes a great many roofs in this city and misses what is wrong with them. On pre-war Canton housing the failure starts in a trough you cannot see from the ground, or from a ladder unless you climb into it.
Asphalt Shingle Roofs
Asphalt covers nearly every roof in Canton and the choice between shingle lines matters less here than almost anywhere else. What the shingle lands on, and how it terminates at the cornice, decides whether it reaches its rated life.
Metal Roofing
We install a lot of metal in Canton and most of it is not on the main roof. It goes on the rear ell, the front porch and the bay roof, which is where this housing stock actually needs it and where the numbers make sense.
Tile Roofing
This is the page where we mostly tell people no, and it is worth saying plainly. If you own an ordinary Canton frame house and you are thinking about a clay or concrete tile roof, we are probably going to argue you out of it.
Flat and Low-Slope Roofing
Almost every low-slope roof we touch in Canton is a piece of a steep roof house. The rear kitchen ell, the porch, the second-floor sleeping porch that got enclosed in the fifties, the flat-topped bay.
Roof Coatings and Sealing
There is a Canton spring ritual we would like to see end. Someone buys a bucket of black roof cement or fibered aluminum coating, climbs up, and troughs it into a leaking built-in gutter.
Roof Ventilation
Ventilating a pre-war Canton attic is harder than ventilating a modern one, for a physical reason that has nothing to do with climate. The place a modern roof takes its air in is occupied by a gutter.
Skylights
Skylights are a straightforward product on a modern house and a genuinely awkward one here. Between a plaster ceiling, a shallow unconditioned attic and board sheathing, a Canton skylight is a light shaft through a cold cavity, and the shaft is where the problems live.
Gutters and Downspouts
This is the center of the site, because in Canton the gutter is often not an accessory bolted to the house. On a large share of the pre-war stock it is part of the roof, built into the cornice, and the costliest thing to get wrong.
Fascia and Soffit
On a Canton house of that vintage, rotten fascia is almost never a fascia problem. The board you are looking at is the outer cheek of a built-in gutter, and it is wet because the trough behind it has been leaking into it, probably for years.
Chimney Flashing
Canton was a coal town and it shows on the roof. A lot of these houses carry two masonry chimneys, one for the furnace and one that served a kitchen or parlour stove, and most of the second ones have been unused since the gas conversion.
Emergency Tarping
Emergency work has one job, which is to stop water entering the building tonight. What that takes on a Canton house depends entirely on where the water is getting in, and a tarp is only sometimes the answer.
Commercial Roofing
Downtown Canton and the older industrial corridors run on two roof types. Brick commercial blocks with a cornice, a built-in gutter behind it and internal conductors dropping inside the wall.
Insurance Claim Help
We are roofers, not public adjusters, and Ohio draws that line for good reason. What we can do is document a loss accurately and quote to the line items a carrier actually uses, which is where most Stark County roof claims are won or lost.
Canton Roof Pros is a roofing contractor in Canton, Ohio, licensed and insured for roof replacement, leak repair, hail and storm work, metal roofing, low-slope membrane, built-in and hung gutter work, cornice and soffit carpentry, chimney flashing, ventilation and commercial roofs. Residential and commercial, one flashing detail through to a full tear-off, priced in writing before anyone starts.
What decides a roof here is not the shingle line. Canton's housing went up on Timken, Hoover, Republic Steel and Diebold payrolls, and on a great deal of that stock the roof does not end at a fascia board. It ends inside a wooden trough built into the cornice and lined with metal, sitting inboard of the wall face. When the lining lets go, the water goes into the house rather than off it.
So every estimate starts at the eave with an awl and a moisture meter, and every proposal prices the edge separately from the field. Laminated architectural shingles, self-adhered ice barrier, synthetic underlayment, soldered copper and fully adhered trough linings, .032 aluminum gutter on hidden hangers, EPDM and TPO on low slope. The inspection costs nothing, anything we open gets photographed, and the workmanship warranty is written down.
What Canton Customers Say
Two other roofers quoted shingles and never mentioned the gutter. These people got up inside it, showed me photographs of the rotted floor, and priced relining against taking it out so I could choose. The stain at the top of my dining room wall is gone.
Straight answer on a ranch with one bad pipe boot: a small repair, not a roof. They charged accordingly and told me to call again in a few years. Hard to argue with somebody who talks themselves out of the bigger job.
Our cornice had been wrapped in aluminum by a previous owner and was soaked underneath. They opened it, cut back to solid wood, rebuilt it in real lumber and relined the trough in copper. Took longer than the other quote and it was worth every day.
They ran a camera down the conductor in our storefront wall before quoting anything, which nobody else offered to do. Found the break, fixed the section, and did not sell us a whole new roof we did not need.
Why Canton Chooses Canton Roof Pros
- ✓We price the roof edge before the roof field, because on Canton's pre-war stock the built-in gutter is what decides the job
- ✓Every proposal quotes relining the trough and removing it side by side, with the maintenance cost of each stated
- ✓We will not hang seamless gutters under a live box gutter and call it a repair, and we will explain on site why that fix fails
- ✓We refuse to trowel roof cement or fibered coating into a wooden gutter, because sealing the top surface only makes the floor rot faster
- ✓Cornice carpentry is done in solid stock primed on all six faces, never aluminum coil bent over soft wood
- ✓Storm loss and long-term trough deterioration are listed on separate pages of the estimate, because a carrier that finds ordinary wear inside a storm claim starts looking harder at everything else in the file
About Canton Roof Pros in Canton, OH
Canton Roof Pros works Canton, Massillon, North Canton, Alliance, Louisville, Canal Fulton and the rest of Stark County, plus Green, Barberton and Norton in Summit County, Orrville and Dalton in Wayne County, and Bolivar and Strasburg down in Tuscarawas County. Residential reroofs, single-detail repairs, cornice and built-in gutter work, low-slope membrane and commercial roofs on the older brick blocks.
We lead with the gutter because this is an old industrial city and its roofs are shaped by that. Canton grew from 50,217 people in 1910 to 104,906 by 1930 on Timken, Hoover, Republic Steel and Diebold payrolls, and the census still counts around two in five housing units here as built in 1939 or earlier.
A great many of those carry the gutter inside the cornice, and a century on that detail is quietly wrecking cornices, rafter tails and plaster across the older wards. Most quotes never mention it.
When not to hire us. If you have a ten-year-old shingle roof on a post-war ranch with hung gutters and one cracked pipe boot, you do not need a company that specialises in cornice carpentry, and you should not pay for one. Call somebody who will charge you two hundred dollars for a boot. We would rather tell you that than sell you an inspection you do not need.
How It Works
- 1
We Get Into the Gutter First
Before anyone talks about shingles we open the cornice trough, sound the gutter floor and bed board with an awl, take moisture readings, and check whether the run still falls toward an outlet. On a pre-war Canton house this is where the roof is either fine or finished, and it takes about an hour.
- 2
A Scope With Two Columns
You get one proposal with edge work and field work priced separately, each line naming the material, gauge, fastening and unit rate. That format exists so you can hold two bids side by side and see exactly where they differ, instead of comparing two round numbers and guessing.
- 3
Edge, Then Deck, Then Field
Work runs in that order every time. Trough and cornice rebuilt or removed, board sheathing replaced where it is split or soft at the stated rate, then membrane, underlayment and covering. Reversing it is how a new roof leaks in the same place inside a year.
- 4
Water Test and Photographs
Before we invoice, the trough gets flooded and every repaired detail gets hosed while somebody watches from inside. You get the photographs, the product and color on the invoice, the leftover material, and the manufacturer warranty registered in your name.
Commercial Roofing in Canton and Across Stark County
We roof and maintain the two commercial building types this county actually has: downtown and neighborhood brick blocks that drain behind a cornice into conductors buried in the wall, and wide-span industrial and warehouse buildings with parapets, curbs and drains. Both get scoped with a camera and a core cut before a price goes on paper.
- ✓Eighty mil TPO and sixty mil EPDM, fastened or adhered to suit the deck
- ✓Two-ply granulated modified bitumen where the deck or exposure calls for it
- ✓Built-in gutter and internal conductor surveys with a drain camera before quoting
- ✓Tapered insulation laid out with crickets between drains, not ordered by the pallet
- ✓Reglet-cut counterflashing and continuous-cleat coping on parapet walls
- ✓Silicone restoration coatings on sound metal and single-ply, with documented mil thickness
- ✓Twice-yearly maintenance agreements with written reports and photographs
- ✓Night, weekend and staged scheduling so no area is left open at close of day
Service Areas
Canton Roof Pros serves Canton, OH and surrounding communities including:
Recent Projects Across Stark County
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is my water stain at the top of the wall instead of the middle of the ceiling?
That is the signature of a built-in gutter leak rather than a roof leak. Water is passing through the trough lining or over its inner cheek and running down inside the wall cavity, so it appears where the wall meets the ceiling. The shingles above it are often in perfect condition, which is why these get misdiagnosed.
What is a box gutter and does my Canton house have one?
A box gutter, also called a built-in gutter, is a wooden trough framed into the cornice at the eave and lined with metal. If your house was built before roughly 1940 and the eave looks like a deep boxed assembly with no gutter hanging off the front, you probably have one. We will tell you for free from the ground in most cases.
Can I just have seamless gutters hung and be done with it?
Not if the trough above is still live. Hanging seamless gutters under a leaking box gutter catches whatever overflows and does nothing about the water soaking the gutter floor and rafter tails above it. If you want hung gutter, the trough has to come out and the cornice has to be closed and sloped first. We quote it that way.
Is my roofer licensed by the State of Ohio?
No roofer in Ohio is. The Ohio Construction Industry Licensing Board issues certificates for electrical, HVAC, refrigeration, plumbing and hydronics work under Revised Code Chapter 4740, and roofing is not on that list. What does apply is municipal.
Canton requires home improvement contractor registration with a surety bond, Massillon requires the same, and North Canton and Alliance require registration without one. Ask to see the card for your own city. Separately, Ohio Revised Code 1345.22 gives you until midnight of the third business day to cancel a contract signed at your door, which matters after a storm.
Does a reroof in Canton need a permit?
Yes. The City of Canton building department lists roofs among the work requiring a permit before it starts, and it requires home improvement contractors working on one, two and three family homes to be registered with it. Cornice and rafter work brings more scrutiny than a straight covering swap. We check what your address needs and pull it ourselves.
How much of a Canton roof job is the edge?
On a post-war ranch, almost none of it. On a pre-war house with a built-in gutter that needs relining or removing, the cornice and trough work can run a quarter to a third of the total, which is why two bids on the same house come in thousands apart. Ask both bidders what they are doing at the eave.