Roofing Services in Berwyn, IL

Berwyn is bungalow country in the most literal sense. The city contains one of the largest concentrations of Chicago-style brick bungalows in existence, block after block of them, built largely in the 1920s to a remarkably consistent pattern. That consistency is useful - we know what we are going to find before we get on the roof - but it also means the same failure points recur across thousands of houses.

The classic Berwyn bungalow is a one-and-a-half story brick house with a low-pitched hipped roof, wide overhanging eaves, a front dormer, and an attic that was very often finished into living space at some point in the last century. That finished attic is the crux of most roofing problems here: it eliminates the ventilation path the roof assembly was designed around, which drives ice damming at the eaves and cooks the shingles from underneath on sunny slopes. Rear additions and enclosed porches typically carry separate low-slope roof sections, and the detached brick garages that come with these lots need their own attention.

Ice dams are the signature winter problem in Berwyn, and they are almost always a ventilation and insulation story rather than a shingle story. Warm air from a finished attic melts snow at the ridge, the meltwater refreezes over the cold, uninsulated eave overhang, and water backs up under the shingles. Ice-and-water shield at the eaves and a genuine intake-to-exhaust ventilation path are what actually solve it.

The Depot District and the Ogden and Roosevelt corridors carry storefront and small mixed-use commercial buildings, predominantly low-slope with masonry parapets.