Roof Demossing: What the Visit Covers

Demossing, roof cleaning and roof moss removal are three names for one visit. People search for whichever phrase they grew up with, and there is no useful distinction between them. What is useful is knowing exactly what the visit includes, because that varies a great deal between crews and it is where most of the disappointment in this trade comes from.

What a full visit covers here

Every slope, not the visible ones. That means the north and east faces that are usually worst, and it means the ones facing the back garden that nobody quoted from the street ever looked at.

Valleys, hips and ridges. A valley concentrates the water off two slopes into one channel and packed growth in it does more harm than growth anywhere else on the roof. Hips and ridges hold growth along the cap line where two planes meet.

The lowest courses above the gutter. This strip stays wet longest of anything on the roof, is shaded by the gutter’s own edge, and cannot be seen from the ground at all. Skipping it means reseeding the roof from six inches above the trough.

The trough and the fascia edge, cleared of growth in the same pass. Not a gutter clean — the difference is set out on the gutter moss removal page — but the growth rooted in the trough comes out while we are there.

Everything off the property. The growth leaves with us rather than sitting in bags by the gate or raked into a bed where half of it washes back.

What it does not cover

Repairs. If a course has lifted, a shake is loose, a tile is cracked or a flashing joint has gone, you get told about it plainly and you get no pressure to have it dealt with.

Treatment. It is quoted separately on purpose, because bundling it hides what you are paying for and gets it applied to roofs that do not need it yet. What treatment does and does not do is set out under moss treatment and prevention.

Gutter cleaning. Different trade, and we send it out rather than half-do it.

Why the roof gets walked

There is a version of this job done entirely from a ladder at the eave. It reaches the strip of roof you can already see from your driveway and nothing else — not the valleys, not the upper slopes, not the back of the house.

Getting onto a roof is also the only way to tell you anything worth hearing about it. Granule wear, soft shake butts, a valley that is still damp on a dry day, a flashing joint starting to open: none of that reads from the ground.

Where a roof genuinely should not be walked — brittle tile, a pitch beyond safe working, a covering at the end of its life — that is what we will tell you, rather than doing the edge and calling it a roof.

What you have afterwards

A roof clear of growth, the debris gone, and a plain account of the covering’s condition: which slopes were worst, what came off, what is wearing, and roughly when it will want looking at again. Shaded roofs under fir or Garry oak here tend to settle into every two to three years.

Free estimate, Monday to Friday, insured and WCB-registered.

Sorted by covering: cedar shake, asphalt shingle, concrete tile.