What's Under the Shingles Decides the Price

The problem in one breath

You bid it as one layer over good decking. Tuesday morning the crew pulls the first course and finds two more layers and a soft spot the size of a truck hood. The job just grew a day, a dumpster and a stack of plywood — and the contract you signed says the old number.

Why it happens

You can't see what's under a roof from the driveway, and the bid has to go out today. So the bid quietly assumes the best case: one layer, sound deck, nothing weird. Everybody knows that assumption is a coin flip, and nobody prices it, because pricing it feels like padding and losing the job. Then the coin comes up tails on the roof, in front of the homeowner, with your crew standing there burning daylight while somebody argues about who pays for plywood.

The play

1. Count the layers before you bid, with your hands. Lift a shingle at the eave, look at the rake edge, or check where a vent or a flashing penetrates. It takes two minutes and it's the single highest-value thing you can do on a bid walk. Write the count on the measure card — layers is a field on the takeoff sheet (M10-01) for a reason.
2. Price tear-off by the layer, not by the roof. Two layers isn't "a little more work," it's most of the tear-off done twice: twice the pulling, twice the loading, twice the cleanup, and a heavier, slower haul. Carry a per-square, per-layer tear-off number and let the takeoff multiply it out.
3. Price the dumpster the same way. Disposal goes by weight and by load, and each extra layer adds both. A roof with three layers can put you into a second dumpster you never bid. Your own last few disposal tickets will give you a per-square, per-layer number better than anybody's rule of thumb.
4. Settle the deck question in the contract, before anybody's on the roof. Put a written line in every agreement: sheets of decking are included up to a stated count, anything beyond it is priced per sheet at a number the homeowner already saw and signed. Then when the soft spot shows up, nobody's negotiating on a roof — you're pointing at a line the customer agreed to in the living room. Say how approval works, too: a photo texted, then a yes, then the sheet goes on. And price the sheets you're including: they go on the takeoff sheet's accessory line before the bid goes out, or you've promised plywood nobody charged for.
5. Check what your own permit office expects before you promise a homeowner anything. How many layers may stay on, what a tear-off requires, and what the inspector wants to see are local answers, and they change from town to town. Ask your building department, get it in writing where you can, and bid what your own jurisdiction actually requires rather than what the last town did.

Do this this week

Take the next roof you bid and count the layers with your hand on a ladder instead of with your eye from the driveway. That one climb is the whole job this week — it prices the tear-off, the dumpster and the decking line all at once, and it takes two minutes.

The tool

No spreadsheet — the layer count and the tear-off numbers live on the takeoff sheet in M10-01. What this play adds is the check you run on the ladder and the line you write into the contract. It's the roof half of the pre-bid challenge (M6-04) — that card asks whether you counted the layers, this one is how you count them. Print it and keep it with the measure card:

  WHAT'S UNDER IT — run this on the bid walk, before the number goes out

  LAYERS       counted at:  [ ] eave  [ ] rake  [ ] vent/flashing      count: ___
  DECK         [ ] board / plank    [ ] plywood / OSB    [ ] can't tell
               soft spots, stains, sag seen from below?  ____________________
  HAUL         layers x squares = the load.  [ ] one dumpster  [ ] two?
  ACCESS       [ ] where the dumpster sits   [ ] drive-over risk  [ ] tight lot

  IN THE CONTRACT, BEFORE HE SIGNS
  [ ] decking included up to ____ sheets
  [ ] each extra sheet: $____ , approved by photo + yes before it goes on
  [ ] extra layers found = priced per layer, per square

  Local code and the permit office decide what's allowed here. Ask them, not the last town.

If your crew is 1099

If your tear-off crew is paid by the square, a surprise second layer changes what the job is worth to them, and that gets renegotiated on the roof at the worst possible moment. Put layer pricing in the sub agreement up front — so much a square for one layer, so much for each one after — and both sides already know the answer before the first shingle comes off.

One more thing: this play is how we run a shop — it's not legal advice. Rules change by state and by contract, so before you act on the legal-sounding parts, run them past your own attorney or accountant. It's your business, and what you do with any of this is your call and your responsibility.