Roofing company in Gaithersburg, MD

Gaithersburg is a townhouse town that grew fast after 1960, and most of its roofs are now on their second or third round.

Gaithersburg stayed a small railroad and farm town until the federal government bought 555 acres for what is now NIST in 1957. The city annexed land around it and grew from 804 acres in 1960 to 4,352 by the end of that decade, and the building followed. In 20877 the 1970s are the single biggest building decade, and roughly 42% of the homes there went up between 1970 and 1989. The city’s own preservation plan describes that era plainly: production construction, a few layouts repeated across whole neighborhoods, and the city’s first townhouse developments.

That is why attached housing matters so much here. 20877 has 3,184 attached single-family homes and 3,070 detached ones, and 20879 is not far behind. A townhouse row is usually one continuous roof split between several owners. Replacing your section means tying new material into the neighbor’s older roof on both sides, and that joint is where a good job and a bad one look different a few winters later. If two or three owners in a row are getting quotes, it is worth comparing what each quote does at the shared edges.

The detached stock has its own habits. The ranch houses of the 1950s and 60s, in neighborhoods like West Riding and Rosemont, were built with long walls and low-pitched roofs. Low pitch is not a problem in itself, but it changes the underlayment a shingle roof needs, and a rear section that drops too low for shingles at all needs membrane instead. The 1980s houses are larger, and most are on their first or second replacement.

Two parts of town come with a review step before the roof. The Brookes, Russell and Walker Historic District (designated 1987) and the Chestnut/Meem Historic District (designated 1997) are locally designated by the city, and work there goes through its Historic District Commission. In Kentlands, begun in the late 1980s, and Lakelands next to it, exterior visual changes go through the Kentlands Historical Trust and the Town Architect. We will tell you plainly if your address falls under either.

Inside city limits, permits come from the City of Gaithersburg rather than Montgomery County, and requirements depend on whether the work is like-for-like or structural. A Gaithersburg mailing address outside the city line may go through Montgomery County instead. We confirm what your address needs before work starts.

Housing figures are from published census data for ZIPs 20877 and 20879. History and historic districts per the City of Gaithersburg 2018 Historic Preservation Master Plan Element.