Roofing

Sizing a Dumpster for a Roof Tear-Off in Watertown

Roofing is where sizing goes wrong most often, and it is always the same mistake: sizing by how the pile looks instead of what it weighs.

The one number that matters: squares

Roofers measure in squares. One square is 100 square feet of roof surface. A typical Watertown single-storey is somewhere between 20 and 30 squares depending on footprint and pitch; the older village houses with steep roofs and dormers can run well past that.

If you do not know your square count, your roofer does, and it is the first thing to ask.

What a square of roofing weighs

Run the arithmetic. A 26 square architectural shingle roof at 350 lb per square is roughly 9,100 pounds — four and a half tons before underlayment. That is at the allowance limit on a 20 yard.

Note the slate row. It is rare but it exists on the older housing and civic buildings around here, and at up to 1,500 lb per square it changes the answer completely — slate goes in a small container, part-filled.

Shingle sizing table

Metal roofs are common here for a reason

Metal roofing is everywhere across the North Country, and it is not a style choice. Snow slides off metal rather than accumulating, which matters enormously in a place that measures winter snowfall in feet rather than inches.

For sizing it flips the usual logic. Metal is light — a 30 square metal roof might weigh under two tons — but the panels are long, awkward and full of air, so a container of loose sheeting fills up astonishingly fast while weighing almost nothing. Size by volume, not weight.

Flatten or nest the panels as you load. And if the volume is substantial, metal roofing is scrap with real value — pulling it out as a separate stream can offset a meaningful part of the job.

The second layer problem

Plenty of older houses here have a second layer of shingle laid over the original. It roughly doubles the tear-off weight, and people often do not know until the crew is up there.

Look at the rake edge from the ground, where a double layer often shows as a thicker band, and ask your roofer to confirm during the inspection. If it turns out on the day, call us — a swap mid-job is far cheaper than an overloaded container.

Ice dams and what they hide

This is the North Country roofing problem, and it changes tear-off sizing more than anything else.

Ice dams form when heat escaping through the roof melts the underside of the snowpack, the water runs down and refreezes at the cold eave, and the resulting ridge of ice backs water up under the shingles. The leak shows up inside as a stain on a ceiling. What it has usually been doing outside is soaking the decking and the insulation for weeks.

So on any roof being replaced because of ice dam damage, budget for more decking than you think and for wet insulation coming out too. Both are much heavier than their dry equivalents. We size those jobs up on volume and down on the weight allowance, and we say so before you book rather than after.

The short northern season

The practical roofing window here runs roughly from late April to October. Shingles need warmth to seal properly, and nobody is tearing off a roof in February unless something has failed catastrophically.

That compresses a year of roofing into about six months, and it makes container demand spike from May onward. If you are a roofing contractor, a standing arrangement with a local hauler before the season starts is worth far more here than in a place with a twelve-month season. We hold capacity for contractors who work with us regularly.

Placement and site cleanup

• Tight to the drip line on the elevation being torn off.
• Doors facing the approach so ground crew can walk material in.
• Clear of the eaves overhead. The truck bed needs roughly twenty-two feet of vertical clearance to tip.
• On boards, and on ground that will carry the weight — particularly in spring, when the frost is coming out.
• Below the rail.

One thing that is not about the container: a tear-off sheds an enormous quantity of nails. A magnet sweep of the driveway, lawn and street at the end of the job is twenty minutes well spent.