This one's written for builders and GCs rather than homeowners. If you're putting up custom homes around Boerne, Bulverde, Fair Oaks Ranch or the Hill Country generally, these are the roofing decisions that determine whether you get callbacks in year three.
Ventilation is the spec that causes the most callbacks
The single most common defect we find on homes five to ten years old is an attic with plenty of ridge exhaust and nowhere near enough soffit intake. Exhaust without intake doesn't ventilate — it just creates negative pressure and pulls conditioned air out of the house.
Spec balanced ventilation explicitly, verify intake isn't blocked when insulation goes in, and make sure the insulator knows not to pack the eaves. This is a coordination failure more often than a design failure, and it produces premature shingle aging and high cooling complaints that land back on you.
Flashing details worth specifying explicitly
- Kick-out flashing at every roof-to-wall termination where roofing meets siding or stone. Omitting it drives water behind the cladding, and the resulting wall rot doesn't appear for years. This is the detail most commonly missing on homes we inspect.
- Step flashing at wall intersections, woven into each course. Not continuous flashing, not caulk.
- Counterflashing cut into masonry at chimneys and stone walls — surface-sealed counterflashing on Hill Country limestone fails fast.
- Ice-and-water shield in valleys and around penetrations, even though we don't get much ice. It seals around fasteners; ordinary underlayment doesn't.
- Low-slope transitions. Porches and patio roofs below about 3/12 need membrane or metal, not shingle. Spec it rather than leaving the roofer to improvise on site.
Material spec for this region
- Class 4 impact-rated shingle is worth considering as a standard rather than an upgrade in Kendall, Comal and Kerr counties. It's a genuine selling point given local hail frequency and the insurance discount that often follows.
- Standing-seam metal on Hill Country custom homes and any structure feeding a rainwater system.
- Synthetic underlayment rather than felt. The cost difference is marginal and the performance during a delayed dry-in window is not.
- Class A assembly on rural acreage — see our wildfire roofing guide.
Scheduling realities
Roofing sits at a dependency-heavy point in the build. Dry-in timing gates everything inside, and a roofer who doesn't show when framing is ready costs you far more than the roofing line item.
What matters on our side: showing up when we said, dry-in the same day we tear into it, and coordinating with the trades above and below us — gutter, solar, HVAC penetrations, masonry at chimneys.
Worth flagging early: if solar is planned, coordinate mounting before the roof goes on. Penetration flashing done as part of the roof is dramatically better than lag bolts driven later, and it protects everyone's warranty position. Our solar guide covers it.
Warranty and paperwork
We register manufacturer warranties in the homeowner's name — we're certified with Atlas, IKO and CertainTeed — and provide a transferable workmanship warranty plus final inspection documentation. For a spec home or a custom handover, that documentation package is part of what you're delivering.
Certificates of insurance are available before any job starts, which your own risk management probably requires anyway.
What we bring to builder work
- Spec consulting before the plans are final, not after
- Schedule reliability, which is the whole ballgame on a build
- Clean trim-outs and a jobsite we leave usable for the next trade
- One point of contact who answers the phone
- Repeat relationships — most of our builder work is repeat work
We're actively bidding new construction across Boerne, Bulverde, Fair Oaks Ranch, New Braunfels and the Hill Country. Reach out or call (210) 245-4125 — most days we can have someone at your jobsite within 48 hours.
