Our house built in 1991 had its roof damaged by a recent hailstorm. We opted for the services of National Star Roofing to replacing our roof with a better quality material given that Calgary is now in a hailstorm zone. The exercise of trying to find a roofing company is not as trivial as it might seem – we worked through the following options:
1) Large building material retailers, while they have a great selection of product, hire outside contractors for installation. Some of these outside contractors are 'established', but in most cases, they are 'crews' that can be traveling across the country, and hence, the quality of workmanship is not necessarily constant. While these retailers will stand by the quality of their work, the hassle of having something going wrong was not a risk my wife and I were willing to take.
2) Contracting companies, which have roofing as one of their services, also hire outside contractors for installation; however, unlike these large building material retailers, because their volume of roofing work is lower, their prices also tends to be higher.
3) Roofing companies, that do only roofing, but rely on outside contractors for installation are even at bigger bind - their prices would even be higher than contracting companies because their volume of work is even lower, and the risk of ending up with a craftsmanship warranty with no one to fulfill is even higher.
After taking nearly six months and talking to probably most of the roofing companies in Calgary, we settled with National Star Roofing because of the following:
a) they do only roofing - in fact, most of their crew, which are all a single family, takes winter off
b) they are a family business - the crew have been working together for the last 10 years, enjoy this kind of business, and would not think of doing anything else.
c) because they do roofing, they have perfected the business of installing roofs (again more on that later)
d) hey truly take customer satisfaction to their heart and would not settle for anything less than a very satisfied customer; and finally,
e) they take pride in their work - and they do not see themselves doing anything else
f) their knowledge of available products is superb - they will avoid getting you a more expensive product that performs equally well as others
But where National Star Roofing shined was during installation - the crew were extremely professional - a well, knit team that delivered with clock-work precision. Here are some of their finer points:
a) they went around the neighborhood asking our neighbors if there were specific hours they would rather not have them work!
b) each team member knew what he was doing; so there was no slacking off, no work overlap, no noisy radios, no littered cigarettes around the house, and even the garbage collection - instead of the typical huge green bin - which could damage your driveway, they had a truck converted to do the job, allowing them to clear away garbage during their lunch hour. And because the truck is movable, I managed to park my vehicle in my garage over night!
c) They kept us updated giving us a daily update on the install - what they have accomplished, any challenges, and any issues they have found with our roof.
d) Fourth, they finished exactly within the promised two-day timeframe, and finally, they treated our property like theirs - they knew we are paying out of our pocket (in our case 40% over what the insurance company settled with us because we bought a much superior roof), and they worked with the same care as if it was their home.
National Star Roofing were exceptional - we highly recommend them again and again.
Thanks National Star Roofing - your excellence and pride of worksmanship shows and deserves to be recognized.
