Just how fast is "fast"

1. Hand-nailed comp: solo/no helper/3-tab/standard pitch/30 2/3 sq. 8 hrs.

2. Hand-nailed comp: helper felting out ahead, running starter/ placing full bundles/no spreading/ 33 1/3 sq./nine hours/ rakes and walls no piece bigger than four square.

3. Hand-nailed comp: 39 ft. geodesic dome on eight foot riser wall/ level lot. Medium weight laminates. Solo/no helper. Four eight hr. days.

4. Yard waste/recycle/garbage out to street/ solo/no helper/ ten minutes.

5. Brush teeth/ 30 seconds.

6. Lunch break: wolf one sandwiches, two cups tea, one pipe/ 20 min.

7. Scrape one perfect oboe reed: solo/ two years/ hundreds of hours. hundreds of rejects before and after.

8. Heavy cedar shakes: hand-nailed no helper standard pitch good material. Less than 8 hrs. Felt thirty squares, spread 30 sq. lay up 20.

Enjoying trying to live up to standards of my grandfather who was still slinging hay bales at seventy while his tractor idled along in low. He'd get back on to turn it down the next row and keep going til they were five bales high. He was a short slender guy.

When I was doing the 2 houses a day with a partener (50sq) that included starter and ridge so say 23sq field in 8 hours would be 5 2/3 to 6 sq and hr 6 staples per shingle with a gun.

I really want to know how many squares are possible, and how many is the most you have seen installed or done yourself. I know I am not the fastest, but I was damn good in my day. That doesn't mean I or anyone else is lying. Maybe "fastest" is not the term we are looking for. perhaps "most efficient" is more to the point.

I have seen block and brick laying contests, where they go head to head, but never shingling contests. Even then, thre is a difference between going balls out for 20 minutes and working all day or all week. The averages catch up to you and the most efficient person pulls ahead.

However..... :side:

old school that could be the extent of his typing ability :blush:

Hey roofer, how come you don't tell us how many you have put on.

Have youi signed in on the thread telling us where you are from and such yet? Just checking

This reminds me what a very wise man once said. Know how to tell when a roofers lying,watch his lips, if their movin he's lyin

Back in the 70's my partner and I got a job with a campany doing comp track houses, they averaged 25 sqs, per unit with 4 roof plans we would do 2 houses a day in 8 hrs.

It was funny the first track we worked on the general called our company and said the framing contractor was complaining they had 5 houses read for us how come we were'nt out there roofing and our boss told the general don't worry we'll get out there then a few days later they called back and said the framing contractor was really getting pissed cause we are'nt out there and they have 7 roofs ready and if we didnt get some work done they were gonna find a new roofing company, so that monday we started and by the end of the week my boss was calling complaining that we were sittin at home on our ass with nothing to do and they never complained again. they would call when they had 10 houses framed and sheathed to let us know we could start work.

After a year they had so much work we had to split up and run tracks for the company and never put more that 1 crew on any track mostly 300 to 500 houses and everybody was happy.

This reminds me of something a very wise man once said, know how to tell when a roofers lying, watch his lips, if their movin, he's lyin

Lanny....You must be/have been on the west coast...Sounds all too familiar...I worked with a guy in San diego one summer, on a big apt. complex project, (4/12, fairly straight runs; Simple hips/valleys), who, like clock-work, hand-nailed 17 sqs every day....I'd do the same, with a staple gun & left only a couple hours before him everyday....I let him try my staple gun one day; He didn't like it....$7.00/sq. 1982, I think.

Done plenty of shakes on skip-sheathing....Had a guy tell me of a method of hand-nailing, whereas when you slammed the nail in one side of the shake, the upward thrust of the other side, would actually drive the shake up against a nai, setting it into the shake.....then a pound down todrive it flush...and so one.....Hard to describe? "Stick nailing" by chance?

---Back in the 70's I worked for a company installing new construction shakes. All were track houses between 20-30 squares and 4-6/12 on skip. All jobs were loaded with shakes, felt & flashing. We worked in pairs and got paid $11/sq. My partner and I would start at 7AM and put on 10+ squares each by lunch and go home. We used Bostitch staple guns with 1 1/2 inch staples. We averaged about 3 houses/week. ---One day he had an early dentist app't so I started out on a 12 sq side by myself. I decided to see what I could do. By 3PM I had 16 sq on and he showed up...decided to let me have the whole house and he went home. ---In 11 hours I had 21 1/5 sq on including felt, 1 valley and one chimney cricket. That is my record. ---I worked with another guy who "stick-nailed" 14 sq shakes on in 6 hours. I never learned to stick nail. I went to staple guns by the mid 70's for shake.

---The fastest we got with comp was with a Senco PW staple gun with a gauge. One had grabs the shingle while the other hand gauges the shingle with the gun and then staples it. You can easily do 10 sq/hour with a competent guy laying out ahead of you on the straight go. Of course, not everything is straight go. But still the gun eats up the field like nothing else.

---By comparison, I am doing a recover that is 24 sq and tomorrow will be my 6th day (with a helper on 3 days.) I just have a few hours to go but I think I am doing 1/2 sq/hour (or less) with a nail gun.

Lanny

#54, you just have to ask them a few more questions; like so at three squares per man hour with 4 guys on the roof, you were putting on 96 squares every day...right? That would mean that every week you were installing almost 500 squares of shingles. wow, we could NEVER go that fast. Your crew must have been part superman. Then let them talk and they will screw themselves right into the ground.

Like Andy says, 1 square per man hour at the end of the year is very good. Roofing is a marathon race and not a sprint.

The fastest roofer I ever saw was my cousin Larry Crookston in Ohio about 40 years ago. I was down there for something and they were talking about how fast they could roof. I had been roofing for quite a while by then as I was about 20 or 21 and I told them that I was as fast as any of them. the next day I went to work with them and we worked on two identical buildings that were 70 2/3 square each, side by side. Two cousins larry and Dan did one with a 14 year old cousin laying out shingles for one and a hired man laying out for the other. I worked on the other building with another two cousins one roofing and the other laying shingles out for us.

They screwed around for about 2 1/2 hours delivering the shingles abnd getting the truck stuck in the sand and sriking lines and getting the compressor set up. I didn't think we were ever going to start putting on shingles. (wasted time) Finally at 10:40 we started to shingle. at 12:15 pm we broke for Lunch and we had 80 squares on. 1 hour and 35 minutes..80 squares with 4 guns running. I was by far the slowest, because I set the shingles on my knee. Larry and dan had their building done in less than an hour after we got back from lunch. 70 squares in less than 3 hours. However, if you add the time setting up and the time wasted, it does bring it down a bit. They were die straight too! Wow!

This reminds me of something a very wise man once said, know how to tell when a roofers lying, watch his lips, if their movin he's lyin

This reminds me of something a very wise man once said. You know how to tell when a roofer is lying. Watch his lips, if there movin, he's lyin

Best I ever saw was my brother-in-law and I installing a roof over, "butt-and-run". We installed 5 sq./hr. He and I were trained by the same guy, my father. I remember thinking that we were re-loading the coil nailer at about 3 minute intervals. Nailer was a Bostitch.

OS is right on the money. Take the total number of hours worked in a year (travel, set up, tear off, loading the roof, install, flashing, scaffolding, tear down, clean up), throw it all in to the total, and I would be very surprised to see much deviation from 1sq/man hour.

Yeah, a 4 pitch pole barn, no penetrations is going to install in a heart beat. But throw a couple of 14 - 20 pitch, two to three story historic homes in there, and that average drops in a big hurry.