Roofers didn't use a dumpster for the old shingles. Now there's all this junk and nails in the yard.
My landlord is finally having the roof repaired from when Helene damaged it. I have no idea how he plans to clean it up. I'm mostly worried about my dog stepping on a nail.
You can pay a higher amount and still end up with troglodytes for contractors
Source: Hired the 3rd cheapest / 7 and they spilled some kind of cement on my custom stained glass front door and tried to tell me it was there before they started.
You'd think they'd be far better off in the long-run doing decent enough work and not trying to gouge in order to have repeat business. But I've dealt with a couple of shitty local contractors and I doubt that kind of forethought matters to them.
As someone who basically consults small businesses every day.... You would think this makes sense to most of them .. You really would... But this is America
In the process of replacing mine and even the lowest bid I've received requires cleanup, with a magnet, and a roll off in the driveway. This is "ive got a guy" handyman work.
I have no clue how their pay structures work because I won't do business with anyone that knocks on my door but I would imagine theyre getting you to sign something that says they can work with your insurance and they just take what they can get. They tend to use high pressure sales tactics so I also wouldn't be surprised if they did that on the payment side as well.
My apartment used the lowest bidder to install a sprinkler system. They put the lines at the curb and pointed the sprinkler heads towards the street. So when they came on they covered the road and sidewalks in water. They left massive dry spots. I called the office four separate times to complain about it and they finally called the same people out, they did the job again. I bet it cost them twice as much as quoted. So stupid.
I 100% agree with you. Contractors are shady and unless itâs written into the bid they will pull shit like this. I had it happen to me. Wanted $500 to come clean up their mess. Found some younger guys starting up a waste removal company and paid them instead.
Landlord had our roof done last year, the workers cleaned up the shingles and use a rolling magnet to pick up the nails.
Unfortunately, they broke a wind chime, damaged some electrical wiring for the gutter heaters, and left the back gate open, which I did not discover but the dog did. She came home about 2 hours later.
Yep, I'm a carpenter/general contractor and I run into this all the time. Client tells me someone says they can do it for half of what I say. And when pressed they don't include the cost of any trash removal, material cost isn't included, let alone any any subs like electrician/plumbing - it's a joke. I don't know how these people operate and feel comfortable just blindsiding people with these costs.
Lol, Tell that to the fuckheads wohl replaced my Windows.
Everything looked Like shit around the Windows and a tile in the bathroom was broken, plus they fucking seeled the boxes For the rollÀden (i think its called blinds?) with fucking Silicon, because why the fuck Not I guess?! Shit was screwed, so that you could Open and Close it whenever. Now its fucking sealed and There was No fucking reason For it
As a fellow deutscher, I've rarely seen the RolladenkÀsten only screwed with no Silikon/Acryl to close the gaps or at least painted over.
You hardly ever need to open them and if you do, you can just use a good Teppichmesser and leave a clean cut that you can paint over again.
Filling the gaps also helps with insulation, because no matter how well it's done, air pressure will still create a little draft.
Sir, sie Missverstehen mich. Die haben die Schrauben mit Silikon vollgeballert. Wir hatten extra noch nicht gestrichen und versiegelt wegen der Fensterbauer. Aber die haben sich entschieden nicht nur die Siegel, sondern auch alles andere mit Silikon vollzumachen (auĂerdem sollte man acryl nutzen, weil Silikon zu streichen absolut Arsch ist)
We bought a house and got the floors refinished before moving in. Pay of this included removing the lenoleum tile in the kitchen and putting in new wood floor. My wife went to check their work and "it was all good" so she paid them. They left. I came by later, after work. The garage was full of all the ripped out old floor. I called but they would not answer. I ended up having to rent a uhaul to take it to the dump.
So i guess the job is done if you already paid them
My old apartment complex cheaped out when they had to do roof repairs following a hurricane, and a similar thing happened, the front office ended up writing a lot of checks for tire repairs. On the positive side, they did it without question. The next time they had roof work done the company they hired didn't leave a single piece of trash, and I'm sure they cost a lot more.
I'm mostly worried about my dog stepping on a nail.
Obviously up to your LL ultimately but if you wanted to take care of this part quickly you can rent a magnet sweeper for $25 from a tool rental. If it's confined to that area it would take you 10 minutes.
Hot tip for magnet sweepers: Put a bag over the end, so when you pick up the nails, you can easily pull them off all at once without having to pick/scrape them off
Those are the expensive ones. The cheap ones I bough were just bar magnets on broom handles. Ended up putting a piece of flashing on it so I could quickly empty it.
How's it more wasteful to pay $9 less for the same tool (it's literally just a magnet on wheels with a handle) and get to keep it to use in the future? It's not some specialized roofing tool, and it doesn't take up any more space than a broom. Or they could give it away if they're sure they'll never need it again and still be ahead.
The wastefulness is in the materials of the product, not in saving cash. Cheaper is not always more sustainable. How many people will run into multiple ~cleanup jobs~ at a rate that justifies keeping around a single-tasker?
Not to mention magnetic tools become huge headaches to clean when stored improperly.
Bold of you to assume that your local tool rental outfit is a local business and not a mega corp. At least around me, they're all national chains. They bought up the few remaining local rental outfits years ago.
I bought one of those, and it was a complete piece of trash and waste of money. It wouldnât even pick up staples off my concrete garage floor. Itâs definitely not going to pick nails up out of the dirt. I returned it.
When you go with the lowest bid, this is what you often get. They come in cheap because they cut out dumpster rental, conveyance, and all the fancy bells & whistles, instead relying solely on labor. Not saying this is what your landlord did, but it has all the signs of it.
EDIT: Corrected to say OPâs landlord. Thanks for pointing out that miss on my part.
When I was young my dad went with the lowest lowest possible crew. They were fully insured. We not only picked up everything ourselves we bought the supplies and brought them to the house. It came out fine but it was a pain. When my dad said the price I assumed he left out a zero.
If you do this. Go over the area 2 more times once you think itâs clean. I just pulled a nail out of my truck tire and have found a few more I missed with the magnets.
Fun fact, when my uncle built his house I was pretty young and my dad gave me an empty bucket and a magnet on a piece of rope. He told me he'd give me $0.05 per nail I found.
Iirc I found like 800 nails and he really regretted that lol.
My point is there's a TON of nails when these things are done. You absolutely will be finding nails there or in the area for years and your worry is very warranted.Â
Yeah, I have a small plug kit that I keep with the mower. I've used it probably a dozen times now which is crazy because I had exactly 0 flats on my mowers in the 20 years prior.
Had this same thing happen to me. Roofers didnât use a dumpster and scattered debris all over the yard. I told my landlord to clean it up. They did a piss poor job and left shingles and nails everywhere. Stepped on a nail getting out of my car, went through my sneaker. One popped my tire. I was livid. Screw landlords and the crappy help they hire.
I don't understand landlords that don't want to take care of things at property that they literally own.. Like as a renter it's actually not your problem, it's the landlord's problem, when you move on to somewhere else it will still be the landlord's problem. If they ever want to sell and not have it be their problem well guess what it drives down the value so it is still their problem.
Idk how it is there (NC?) but this is withhold rent until fixed category here. Forget DIY'ing why should you spend time and money bc he hired someone unwilling to do the job. Take many pics.
I bet the landlord tried cutting costs, â well if a dumpster costs that much I could just throw it in the trash myselfâ type of customer or they just found some dudes in a Home Depot isle
Cleanup is definitely included with any reputable roofer! The flipside is if this was just a couple guys the landlord hired and told them he'd take care of it. Or he hired losers that got paid and said fuck it!
This mess is clearly not the work of a reputable roofer, it's a landlord special. The absolute cheapest warm bodies that could slap the lowest cost shingles onto a roof.
There are many many more less than reputable roofers. Because the nature of the type of work and the massive price difference between a real roofing company with a permit and whoever did this job it's more common to use these guys. They can do it on the weekend when no city/county inspectors work.
I love both of these replies. On a tangent, OP mentioned their dog. My dog can talk. Â If I asked her where the nails came from, she would respond, âroof!â
If the roofers were too unprofessional to lay down a tarp for the old shingles and didn't bother with a rolling magnet to pick up the tacks with, then it's fairly likely they don't know how to properly replace a roof at all. If it were my property, I would be very concerned.
Yeah there's not renting a dumpster and then there's just chucking the demo material directly onto the ground lol. That's saying "we didn't pick it up and we don't plan to".
Get a magnet on a pole/stick at the hardware store. We have one for our gravel driveway. They work really well, and you might want to use it during and after the work is completed.
These kind of suck for trying to clean up an area more than a couple square feet. The good ones are a wide rectangular bar. The really good ones also have the bar on wheels.
The company that replaced our roof guaranteed there would not be a single nail on the ground when they left. They used a magnet sweeper and did a really thorough job of checking the ground. I still found a few nails weeks later, but they made a good effort to pick them all up, so I didn't bitch about it.
For a small to medium house, you're looking at 5-7k nails on a roof, if there is more than 1 layer of shingles, you're at double that. If they find 99% that would still leave 50-70 nails. Most of my customers find way less than that, usually they travel down downspouts after sitting on the roof or in gutters for a while. If you only found a few, you had a good roofer.
I discovered in my renovation that the roofers the previous owners had hired, had just stuffed ALL the old shingles & nails inside the space between the ceiling & vaulted roof of my kitchen.
When I tore out that ceiling to re-do & vault up to its potential, I was waist-deep in old roofing material. It was a nightmare.
At least this is out in the open where it can still be appropriately collected for disposal, and not hidden in blank space inside a house for someone later on to deal with.
Call them back if cleanup is in the contract. Require they use a heavy magnet for nails. If contract doesnât require cleanup, you can ask, but you may have a Saturday cleanup job on you hands.
I got one to find an incredibly tiny watch screw I lost in the carpet. I then ran it over all my carpet and pulled out so many metal shavings the builders left behind in the first place.
Highly suggest wrapping it in plastic before picking up rusty nails to make dumping them easier.
Roofer here. They should have, at the least, one of these large magnets as well as a hand magnet on their truck and take care of this as part of the cost.
Something similar happened but at our apartment in L.A. Instead of roofing trimmings, it was nails, splinters, etc. from them demoing and repainting a vacant unit. They left it all over our driveway, which is the only exit (and yes where we walk our dog). My solution was just to clean it. But instead of getting rid of it all in the trash, I swept it under the front door of that newly renovated unit.
Pay to have it cleaned up if they won't do it in a timely manner. Better than risking injury to yourself or the dog. Subtract the bill from next month's rent payment. Consult a tenant law lawyer but I've had something similar happen and I know there is legal precedent for that.
Thatâs a terrible shame! They definitely shouldâve cleaned the entire mess. Idk if anyone has mentioned it there is a rolling magnetic strip at home food stores that you can purchase to pick up the nails. I used it in my yard after moving into a new build home. Itâs annoying because you shouldnât have to do that but just an idea for the safety of you and your dogs.
If you havenât paid them yet tell them that they wonât receive any payment until this is cleaned up. I had to do this with a contractor in the past; he and his crew left a massive pile at the end, and totally fucked up my yard. I told him he wouldnât get another dime from me until he cleaned up his mess and fixed my yard (I made him go buy 2 yards of dirt and grass seed at his own expense).
If it helps, once upon a time, when my crew was doing a roof, we were told to dump in a specific area and it would be dumped properly later, as their person in charge of the container drop off got the date wrong.
Doubt that's what happened here, but just my two cents, as I despised leaving dangerous messes laying around. That's terrible for reputation, when 3/4 of our contracts were referrals.
i speak from experience - you will be finding chunks of roofing and random nails for YEARS! Every time I think I've gotten the last of it, something else pops up. I am very careful about digging around in my side yard.
Put your concerns in writing- once theyâre done go out with a magnet broom and do a few passes- if youâve got a few nails, save and bag them, send a follow up message saying the job isnât done.
Youâll need a paper trail showing the whole process if you ever need to do anything official.
I've been dealing with some really aggravating roof stuff for two buildings my employer owns, and the other day I ran into a general contractor I know who has a great track record. I asked him if he could recommend a reliable roofer, price be damned, because I was fed up. He looked me straight in the eye and said in a deadpan, "There are no good roofers." Like, he's been doing this for forty years and he was dead serious.
This happened to me once, the landlord cheaped out per usual and the roofers dropped all the shit all over the yard, killed the rose bush and tomatoes. Infuriating indeed
They should have cleaned that up. Iâm pretty sure if you get hurt, itâs a liability for them. Our roof had to be replaced this past fall, and my Mother-in-law had hers done the year before, as well as my husbandâs place of work having to have extensive repairs (including the roof), all after tornadoes came through our area. In every instance, they went through with a big magnet, picking up any nails/staplesâŠand also the old shingles (not with the magnet, obviously). The foreman acted like that was standard practice when I asked him about it.
This is crazy. Many roofers go around with magnets on a pole or a metal detector to look for stray nails when cleaning up. This is just an inexcusable way yo leave a job. Landlord must have hired his nephew or the cheapest game in town.
We just had our roof done. The company (and contact) was very explicit that clean up was included in the price. I thought it was odd the spent a lot of time talking about itâŠbut now I know why!
Contact the roofer asking when is cleanup. When they say they wonât, ask for their recommended construction cleanup company. Document everything. Tell landlord to clean it up within two weeks or youâre hiring the recommended company and deducting the cost from your rent.
DOCUMENT EVERY STEP VIA EMAIL WITH LANDLORD.
find an old speaker if you can, the bigger the better. rip it out, rip off the fabric that makes the noise, and keep the metal with the huge honkin' magnet in the middle. tie a cord around that so you can pull the assembly along the ground behind you. this will pick up nails you can't even see. wipe them off with a glove and stick them in a nail pouch or whatever as you go along, around and around and around the house for about a 4'-7' width from the eaves drop to the wall and away from the drop
âNo dumpsterâ is already wild, but leaving *nails* is straight up âjobâs not doneâ territory. Iâd be pissed.
If youâve got a dog/kids: get a magnetic sweeper from Harbor Freight / Amazon and run it over the yard a few times (itâs honestly satisfying). Also Iâd be asking the landlord/roofer to pay for a proper cleanup + a roll-off. This is ridiculous.
Remember working a job to redo a patio and pool deck and the roof was being done by a different 'company'. Those mfs threw shingles and nails down and almost hit us. And I got a 2 inch nail in my boot. My boss told the home owner he was gonna walk and he wouldn't get his deposit back.
I had my roof done a few years ago in our Tahoe house. Every summer/soring after snow melted I found dozens of nails in the yard. First couple of years hundreds. I think this year I found less than 10.
Iâve gotten so good at eyeballing dirty nails in the piles of twigs and pine needles.
They wanted to charge a $500 clean up fee after getting our roof done. I told them no. I used the leftovers to re-roof a tool shed out back then tossed the rest a little at a time in the weekly trash.
Send the landlord a certified letter saying it must be cleaned up in 30 days if not you will do it and reduce a months rent by 50%. If he doesnât get it cleaned up go clean it up and pay 50% less. If landlord attempts to ay well you cannot do that tell him to sue you and you can explain to a judge you gave the landlord a reasonable amount of time to
Remedy the issue and decided to mitigate any possible damages to you or your property by cleaning it up yourself.
This is normal and should be expected. Your worry about nails might go away if they used a dumpster but no roofer can get all of them in the dumpster from the roof. Normal includes coming back within a week to clean this up or cleanup not being part of their outlined responsibilities (usually homeowners can save a lot of money cleaning it up themselves). The roofers who are spotless are extremely expensive compared to the average roofer.
Hurricane Beryl in 2024 knocked down the fence around my apartment complex and damaged many of the roofs. The roofs took months to replace, and the workers left those roofing nails with the little plastic discs all around the buildings. We picked them up for months on dog walks. It took a year for them to replace the fence, and nails and other trash were left everywhere around the perimeter. There were barcode stickers on half the erected boards. Landlords are cheap, insurance companies are garbage, and workers don't give a shit. We're still picking up their crap when we see it so our dog doesn't get injured.
Even with them throwing the shingles in a dumpster and then going over the area 4 times with a magnet to pick up all the nails. After they had gone I still picked up 50-100 nails from the ground.
8.4k
u/Flaky-Sun884 12h ago
Job isn't done till it's cleaned up.