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Cedar shake roof installation: a material that has to breathe

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What the job involves

Cedar Shake Roof Installation in Hartford, CT

Why cedar fails from underneath

Cedar's top face is built for weather. The wood's natural oils and the way a shake sheds water off its exposed surface hold up fine against sun and rain — that's not where a cedar roof usually runs into trouble. The underside is a different story. Pressed flat against solid decking with no airflow behind it, the back of a shake stays damp for hours or days after every rain and every snowmelt, and that trapped moisture is what actually shortens a cedar roof's life.

Wood held wet for long stretches supports the fungal growth that causes rot, and it does that from the back of the shake outward, where nobody sees it until the damage has already progressed. A cedar roof can look sound from the street — even, unbroken coverage with no obvious cracking — while the underside of individual shakes is softening in a way that only shows up once a shake is pulled or a leak develops. That's the opposite failure pattern from an asphalt shingle, which tends to show its wear on the visible surface first.

Humid stretches are exactly when this matters most, because they're what keeps the underside from ever fully drying out between wettings. A roof assembly that gives the back of each shake somewhere for that moisture to go — instead of trapping it flat against solid decking — is the single biggest factor in whether a cedar roof reaches a long service life or starts failing from underneath years ahead of schedule.

This is also where a crew's experience with the material shows up most, because the failure mode is easy to miss if nobody's looking for it. A crew used to installing asphalt shingles can lay cedar in a way that looks correct on installation day — tight courses, straight lines, clean flashing — while skipping the airflow layer that never shows up in a finished-roof photo. The mistake doesn't announce itself for years, which is exactly the problem: by the time underside rot is visible from inside the attic or a shake starts delaminating, the moisture that caused it has usually been building for multiple wet seasons already.

Ventilation and spacing requirements

Traditional cedar roofs were installed over spaced sheathing — boards with gaps between them rather than a solid deck — specifically so air could move behind every shake. Most homes being roofed today have solid plywood or board decking already in place for other reasons, which means that airflow channel has to be built back in a different way: a breather mat or elevation layer installed between the solid deck and the shakes, creating a thin air gap the back of the wood can dry into instead of sitting flush against an impermeable surface.

That gap only works if air is actually moving through it, which ties cedar back to the same attic-level ventilation that governs any steep-slope roof. The same intake-and-exhaust balance applies here as it does under any pitched covering: ARMA guidance calls for attic intake to provide roughly 50 to 60 percent of the net free venting area and exhaust 40 to 50 percent, with intake always equal to or greater than exhaust — an attic that's short on intake can end up pulling makeup air back through its own exhaust vents instead of drawing it in fresh at the eaves. Cedar adds a second, product-level airflow requirement on top of that attic balance, which is why getting the whole system right matters more here than it does under most other coverings; our roof ventilation installation page covers the airflow side of that pairing.

Spacing between individual shakes matters too, and it's easy to get wrong in the direction that looks better on installation day. Shakes are laid with a small gap between adjacent pieces in each course, because cedar expands when it absorbs moisture and needs somewhere to move without buckling. Shakes butted tight against each other for a cleaner look at installation can cup, split, or push against their neighbors once the wood swells with the first wet season.

Shakes and shingles aren't the same product, and the difference affects how each one handles moisture. A shake is split rather than sawn, which leaves it thicker and more irregular with a rough, textured face; a cedar shingle is sawn flat on both sides, thinner and more uniform. The thicker, split profile of a shake holds more water at the surface after a rain simply because there's more wood mass to saturate, which is part of why the airflow gap behind it matters even more than it does behind a thinner sawn shingle. Underlayment and starter-course detailing also differ between the two, since a shake's irregular butt edge needs more coverage behind it than a shingle's straight one does to keep wind-driven rain from working its way up and under.

Maintenance the material demands

Cedar is not a material to install and forget. Moss and lichen take hold readily on a damp wood surface, and once established they hold moisture against the shake even longer than the wood would retain on its own — a cedar roof under tree cover or on a shaded north slope needs more regular attention than the same roof in full sun, since it simply doesn't dry out between rains the way a sun-exposed section does.

Debris is the other recurring issue. Needles, leaves and small branches collect in the valleys and between courses far more readily on a textured cedar surface than on a smooth shingle, and debris left to pile up holds water against the wood in exactly the spots where drainage matters most. Periodic clearing, along with checking that the ventilation channel underneath hasn't been blocked by debris or compressed over time, is part of what keeps the underlying breathing mechanism actually working rather than just present on paper.

Some cedar roofs are installed with a fire-retardant or preservative treatment applied to the wood, depending on what local code requires and what the homeowner wants from the roof beyond appearance. That treatment can wear over time with sun and weather exposure, which is another reason a cedar roof benefits from a periodic look rather than being treated as a set-and-forget covering the way a shingle or metal roof more reasonably can be.

None of this is unique to any one roof — it's the tradeoff for a material that most homeowners choose for how it looks and ages rather than for low maintenance. Our residential roofing services page walks through how cedar compares against asphalt, metal and slate on that basis, since the upkeep a wood roof demands is a real part of that decision, not a footnote to it.

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Mon–Sat 7am–6pm

Calls are answered Mon–Sat 7am–6pm. Arrival windows are agreed on the call, and storm damage gets priority.

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Part of our residential roofing services work — related: asphalt shingle roof installation, slate roof installation.

Through the year

How Hartford weather changes this job

Winter in Hartford

Ice dams build along the eaves when attic heat melts snow that then refreezes at the colder edge, backing water up under the shingles. Sustained snow load also stresses older framing and flat sections built with a lighter deck.

Spring in Hartford

Freeze-thaw cycling through late winter works ice into small cracks in flashing and sealant, so the first heavy spring rain is usually when a slow leak turns visible. Wind during spring storms lifts shingles that ice already loosened.

Summer in Hartford

UV exposure and heat cycling dry out asphalt shingles faster on south- and west-facing slopes. A roof that looked fine in June can show granule loss and curling edges by August.

Autumn in Hartford

The season for getting ahead of winter — gutters cleared, flashing checked, and a full inspection scheduled before the first hard freeze locks in whatever damage went unnoticed over summer.

What we handle

Roofing services in Hartford

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What's going on with your roof?

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Where we go

Hartford and the surrounding towns

Hartford is the base; these are the neighboring communities our crews cover.

Hiring in one of these towns?

A separate guide for each town on what to check before you sign with any roofing contractor there — license and insurance, written scope, and what the warranty actually covers.

Straight answers

Common questions about roofing costs and service

What is the average cost to repair a chimney?

Chimney repair is masonry work, which falls outside the roofing scope we price, so we'd point you toward a mason rather than estimate a trade we don't practice. Where it touches our work is the flashing at the base of the chimney, which often needs attention at the same time a chimney gets repaired — that seam is worth having a roofer look at on its own, since flashing and masonry repair timing can affect each other.

What is the new trend for siding?

We don't track siding trends closely enough to answer that honestly — it's outside the roofing work we do, and we'd rather send you to a siding contractor than guess at a market we don't follow. What we can say from the roofing side is that a roof and its siding meet at real details, like a wall-to-roof step flashing or a chimney chase, so whatever siding direction you choose, it's worth having those transitions checked once the work is done.

What is a common chimney problem?

From the roofing side, the most common issue we see isn't the chimney structure itself but the flashing where it meets the roof — step flashing that has pulled away or corroded, or old sealant used as a substitute for a proper flashing rebuild. That's a roofing detail more than a masonry one, and it's one of the more frequent sources of a leak that shows up nowhere near where the water actually got in. Cracked mortar joints and a deteriorating crown on top of the chimney are the masonry-side problems, and those are worth a mason's separate look.

How much should guttering cost to replace?

Linear footage of roofline, the number of corners and downspouts needed, and which gutter material and profile get chosen all move that number more than any single average figure could. A cedar roof adds its own variable: needles and shake debris shed more readily than they do off a smooth shingle roof, so gutters under a cedar roof often need larger or more frequent clearing to keep water moving the way the system was sized for. We'll fold a gutter estimate into a cedar roofing visit when drainage is part of the conversation, but it's scoped and priced on its own rather than bundled in by default.

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