Roofing

Sizing a Dumpster for a Tile or Foam Roof Tear-Off

Concrete tile is three to five times the weight of asphalt shingle. Book a 30 yard for it and you will fill a fifth of the box and still be unable to move it.

The one number that matters: squares

Roofers measure in squares. One square is 100 square feet of roof surface. A typical Maricopa single-family home runs somewhere between 20 and 35 squares — production housing here tends toward larger footprints and lower pitches than older housing elsewhere.

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 here

Look at the spread. Concrete tile is roughly three to five times the weight of asphalt shingle for the same area, and something like ten times the weight of foam. No other market we work in has that range in ordinary residential roofing.

Concrete tile is a different calculation

Run the arithmetic on a typical Maricopa tile roof. A 28 square roof at 1,000 lb per square is 28,000 pounds — fourteen tons of tile before underlayment or anything else.

Two further points that matter on tile jobs.

Tile breaks as it comes off, so it occupies more volume than the intact roof suggests while weighing exactly the same. Broken tile also loads awkwardly and settles, which is another reason not to try to stack it high.

A great many tile "replacements" are not replacements. On these roofs the tile is often sound and the underlayment beneath it has failed. In that case the tile is lifted, stacked, and re-laid over new underlayment — which means far less waste than a full tear-off, and a much smaller container. Ask your roofer which job you are actually having done before you book anything from us.

Foam and flat roofs

Spray polyurethane foam is common on the flat and low-slope sections that Maricopa architecture is full of — additions, patio covers, garages and whole flat-roofed homes.

Foam is the opposite problem from tile: extremely light and extremely bulky. A foam tear-off will fill a container's volume while barely registering on the weight allowance, so these jobs size up — a 20 or 30 yard for what looks like a small roof.

Two practical notes. Foam comes off in large irregular slabs that trap air, so breaking it down as it is loaded makes a real difference to how much fits. And foam is light enough to blow out of an open container in an outflow, so keep it covered between sessions during monsoon season.

Many foam roofs are recoated rather than stripped, which produces almost no waste at all. Again — ask which job it is.

Shingle sizing table

For tile, ignore this table entirely and use a 10 yard with swaps. For foam, size up rather than down.

Underlayment and the hidden second job

Worth knowing before you commit to a container size.

On tile roofs the underlayment is usually what has failed, and it is the reason for the work. It is light, so it barely affects weight — but if the decking beneath it has also gone, the job changes character completely and adds real tonnage.

Sun is the driver here rather than water. Ultraviolet exposure and sustained roof-surface heat degrade underlayment and sealants far faster in this climate than in milder ones, which is why these roofs need attention on a schedule that surprises people who have moved from elsewhere.

If your roofer finds bad decking mid-job, call us — a swap is far cheaper than an overloaded container that cannot legally be hauled.

Placement, heat and the nail problem

Roofing containers need to sit close to the house, and in Maricopa that is usually easy: wide driveways, no overhead branches, no tight lanes. Placement here is genuinely simpler than in most markets.

Three local specifics:

• Heat compresses the working day. Roofing crews here start at first light and are often off the roof by early afternoon in summer. A tile job that takes three days in March can take five in July, so book the rental period accordingly.
• Ask for an early delivery. Same reason.
• The HOA may cap how long the container sits in view. On a tile job with multiple swaps that is worth checking first, because these are not one-day jobs.

And everywhere: boards go under the rails as standard, and a tear-off sheds an enormous quantity of nails. A magnet sweep of the drive and the street at the end is twenty minutes well spent, and it is the single most common complaint homeowners have about roofing work.

Getting the quote right

Tell us three things and the size will be right first time:

• The material — concrete tile, clay tile, shingle, foam or built-up. This changes the answer more than anything else.
• The square count, which your roofer knows.
• Whether it is a full tear-off or an underlayment replacement with the tile going back on. The difference is enormous.

If it is tile, say so at booking. We will plan the swap schedule from the start rather than discovering it when the first container cannot be lifted.