Short answer
Most New Jersey asphalt roof replacements are torn off and finished in a single day. The crew arrives early, protects the ground and landscaping, strips the old roof to the decking, repairs anything rotted, installs underlayment and shingles, then cleans the property and sweeps for nails before leaving.
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A roof replacement is the largest thing most people will ever have done to their house in a single day, and almost nobody has seen one before their own. Most New Jersey asphalt roofs are torn off and fully replaced between morning and evening. Here is what that day actually looks like.
Before the day starts
Two things are already done before anyone arrives.
The permit is pulled. Roof replacement requires a construction permit in New Jersey under the Uniform Construction Code, and Lightning pulls it from your municipality's own construction office and attends the inspection. You file nothing. The permit guide covers how that works in more detail.
The materials are delivered. Shingles, underlayment, flashing, vents and fasteners either arrive the day before or first thing in the morning. On many jobs the shingles are loaded directly onto the roof so the crew is not carrying bundles up a ladder all morning.
You will also have been told roughly what time to expect people. Crews start early, because the useful working hours in summer are the cool ones.
Early morning: setup and protection
The first hour is not roofing. It is protecting everything that is not the roof.
- Tarps and plywood go down around the perimeter of the house to catch debris and shield the ground.
- Shrubs and plantings against the foundation get covered.
- Patio furniture, grills and anything loose gets moved clear.
- The dumpster is positioned, usually on the driveway on protective boards.
- Ladders and roof jacks go up, and fall protection is set.
This is worth watching if you are home, because it is the clearest early signal of how the rest of the day will go. A crew that takes half an hour covering your landscaping is a crew that intends to clean up afterward.
Move your cars out of the driveway before the crew arrives. You will not be getting back in past a dumpster.
Mid morning: tear-off
This is the loud part. The old shingles come off down to the wood decking, along with the old underlayment, the old flashing and the old vents. Everything goes over the edge into the dumpster or gets carried down.
Tear-off is where a roof stops being a guess. Until the old material is off, nobody can see the decking, and the decking is what everything else is fastened to. This is also the moment a lot of homeowners get an unwelcome phone call from a different contractor — the call where the price goes up.
It should not be a surprise. The conditions that normally trigger that call, including extra layers of old shingles, damaged decking and inadequate flashing, are things a proper inspection identifies before the contract is written. Lightning prices them into the quote and does not write change orders, so the written estimate is the final price. Why that call happens on other jobs is worth understanding before you sign anything.
Midday: decking, underlayment and flashing
With the roof stripped, the crew works through the layers that nobody ever sees.
Decking is inspected and any soft or rotted plywood is replaced. This is the single most common thing found during tear-off, particularly on older housing stock, and it is why the per-sheet price should be agreed in writing up front rather than negotiated with your roof already open.
Ice and water shield goes on at the eaves, in the valleys and around penetrations. In New Jersey this is the layer that deals with ice dams backing water up under the shingles in winter, and how far it runs up from the eave is a real specification worth asking about. What causes ice dams in the first place is covered in the ice dams guide.
Synthetic underlayment covers the rest of the deck.
Flashing is installed new at every wall, chimney and valley. Reusing old step flashing is one of the three ways a roofing quote gets quietly cheap, and it is invisible from the driveway once the shingles are on.
Afternoon: shingles and ventilation
Shingles go on from the eaves upward, course by course, with starter strip at the edges and cap shingles at the ridges.
Ventilation is finished at the same time. Ridge vent goes in at the peak, and intake venting at the soffit is checked, because a ridge vent with no intake below it does very little. Balanced attic ventilation is what keeps the underside of the deck dry and the shingles at a sane temperature, and it is a warranty condition for most manufacturers.
By late afternoon the roof is watertight.
End of day: cleanup
The last hour is cleanup, and it is the part homeowners judge the whole job on.
- Debris is cleared from the ground, the gutters and the roof surface itself.
- Tarps come up along with whatever landed on them.
- The dumpster is hauled away or scheduled for pickup.
- The property is swept with a rolling magnet for nails, over the lawn, the driveway and the beds.
- Everything that was moved gets put back.
Walk the property yourself afterward, and walk the driveway barefoot if you want the honest test on nails. Look up at the ridge line and the edges from the street. Check the gutters.
What happens after
The municipal inspection is scheduled and attended by Lightning. The manufacturer warranty on the materials and the workmanship warranty on the installation are two separate things covering two different failures, which the warranty guide explains.
And the payment happens now, not before. There is no deposit on any Lightning job — nothing is due until the work is finished and you have inspected it.
Lightning Construction is a veteran-owned, GAF-certified roofing contractor working across all 21 New Jersey counties, rated 4.9 out of 5 from 264 Google reviews. If you want to know what your own roof needs, the inspection and the written estimate are free and carry no obligation. See the roofing page or request a free estimate.
