Before we fasten anything to a Lakewood roof we find out how many roofs are already up there. These houses went up between 1950 and 1953, roughly seventeen and a half thousand of them at up to a hundred a day, and seventy years of re-roofing has left many carrying three or four layers of composition over the original deck. Drive a batten screw into that and it feels tight, but it's only gripping shingle. The first real gust peels tarp, battens and the top layer of roof off together in one piece.
So fasteners here have to reach the 1950 sheathing or the rafters below it, which means longer screws placed deliberately rather than run on a grid. The upside of Lakewood's uniformity is that we know roughly where those rafters sit before anyone climbs up. The downside shows after a windstorm: identical low-pitch roofs on identical houses fail in identical places, and one street will lose the same section on a dozen homes in the same hour. Around Del Amo and the blocks near Lakewood Center, that's exactly what the phone sounds like.
What Lakewood Changes About Board-Up & Tarping
1Count the layers before you fasten
Three or four shingle layers is common on these roofs, and each one adds thickness a fastener has to pass through before it reaches anything structural. Short screws feel solid and hold nothing at all. We check at the edge or a vent penetration to gauge the stack, then select fastener length from that. It's a two-minute step that decides whether your cover survives the next front.
2One storm, forty identical roofs
Because the whole city went up in three years to a handful of plans, wind loads these roofs identically. When a front comes through we'll get calls from one street describing the same failure four different ways. We sequence by exposure, not by call order: open decks and active water first, missing shingles with the deck intact after. We'd rather tell you that plainly than pretend everyone is first.
3Shallow attics show damage fast
There isn't much attic in a 1950 Lakewood house. The gap between roof deck and the ceiling below is small, so water past the roof reaches drywall and insulation quickly with almost no buffer, and it will track along a ceiling joist to appear in a room away from the breach. The upside is you find out fast. The downside is there's no margin for waiting until Monday.
How the Work Runs
The method is the same one we use on every board-up & tarping job, documented to the IICRC S500:2025 standard. Here it is in short — the full emergency board-up & roof tarping process explains each stage in detail.
- Safety and structure first
- Photograph the opening before we cover it
- Dry-in the roof opening
- Board and brace the openings
- Shore what is carrying load
- Handle the water already inside
The Lakewood Background Worth Knowing
Galvanized steel supply piping was standard when Lakewood was built, and it fails in a specific and predictable way. The zinc coating protecting the steel wears through from the inside, the steel corrodes, and scale builds up on the interior wall — narrowing the pipe over decades. As the diameter shrinks, water velocity and turbulence increase, which accelerates the erosion at elbows and fittings until a thin spot lets go.
There is more on the housing stock, drainage and plumbing history of this city on our water damage restoration in Lakewood page.
Lakewood at a glance
- Dominant construction era
- 1950–1953
- Foundation type
- slab on grade
- Supply piping found here
- original galvanized steel
- Drain line materials
- cast iron
- Terrain and water table
- flat, moderate water table
- Most common local failure
- seventy-year-old galvanized supply lines letting go at a scaled, eroded fitting
- Highest-value local prevention
- repiping while walls are already open for a repair, rather than as a separate project later
What It Costs in Lakewood
We do not quote a number over the phone before seeing the property — anyone who does is guessing. The variables that actually move the price on a board-up & tarping job are area covered and roof pitch, number and size of openings, conditions at the time of the call, and they are broken down in full on the emergency board-up & roof tarping page. The assessment and the written estimate are free anywhere in Lakewood, day or night, with no obligation.
Board-Up & Tarping Questions from Lakewood Homeowners
By what's actually letting water in, not by who called first. An open deck with rain coming through goes ahead of a roof that lost shingles but still has intact felt and sheathing, even if that second call came in earlier. We'll tell you where you sit and give you a realistic window rather than a comfortable one. If your situation is the second kind, we'll also tell you what to do meanwhile so the wait costs you nothing.
A properly fastened tarp on a sound deck holds for weeks and gets you through the rest of a wet season. We have had covers stay tight for a couple of months while claims and permits worked out. That said, it is temporary by design — the material degrades in UV, and every storm works on the edges. If yours is going to be up longer than a few weeks, we come back and check it rather than assuming.
Usually not. Most policies require you to take reasonable steps to prevent further damage and allow emergency mitigation without waiting for an adjuster — waiting is often the thing that creates a coverage argument. Call your carrier and open the claim, then let us secure the building. We photograph everything before and after and give you an itemized invoice, which is what the adjuster needs to approve the emergency line separately from the repair scope.
Have it assessed. Seventy-year-old galvanized has exceeded any reasonable service life, and declining pressure or rust-colored water means it is well along. If a repair is already opening walls, that is the cheapest moment you will ever get to repipe — the demolition and patching are already in the scope.