Just got back from inspecting a house here in Norfolk, NE. Found many cracked shingles on the roof–primarily on the south side, but also on the other sides to a lesser extent.
The owner indicated that the shingles are New Horizon (Certainteed) brand shingles, installed in 2005.
The degree of cracking seems to be quite premature for a roof of this age. Attic ventilation is present and would seem “adequate” (if such a term can be applied).
Anyone have any ideas on what’s going on? I’m thinking it’s a manufacturer defect, but I’m all ears.
Thanks for the quick replies. Sounds like a manufacturer’s defect to me, but I couldn’t find anything in the Certainteed settlement information regarding New Horizon shingles made in 2005. Still, it doesn’t take a settlement to have a defect!
These shingles were installed in 2002. Dimensional shingles with every dimensional segment had crazing. What’s up with this? MFG Defect? I could not find the manufacturer of the shingles as there were none visible in the attic or any other location during the inspection.
Greg, I’m located in Canton, MI just east of Ann Arbor (metro Detroit). Pic was from a home Canton. I walked the roof and the entire covering that I could see was like this. I have seen others around this age to look the same but this is my worst example.
Strangly enough, this house was also built in 2000. I had not seen this type of damage before and then two back to back. You have to think that it was a bad / defective batch of shingles
Also let’s not forget another possible factor can be extreme weather changes. With the roof decking constructed of different material than covering, this can cause the roof deck beneath the shingles to expand and contract differently, causing stress on the asphalt shingles and drastically shorting there lifespan**.**
In general, asphalt shingles aren’t what they used to be. In 2000, oil was $10/bbl; 3 months ago it was #110/bbl. Don’t you think the manufacturer’s might be cutting the asphalt with fillers or something to keep costs down?
In my opinion, most of these shingle “early life” failures are not from substrate movement, lack of attic venting, poor installation, etc but poor design/manufacturing practices. Here’s a few articles easily found on the web when you do a search for “asphalt shingle failure lawsuits”.
I run into these about once a month here in Wisconsin. These are from a condo built in 2003. The condo association hired me to inspect the roof and help with assessing the issue. These were one of the CertainTeed recall products.
As Joe mentioned a couple of times, there have been lawsuits and widespread problems with CertainTeed New Horizon shingles.
Craze cracking is a problem with differential shrinkage rates between asphalt at the surface and underlying asphalt and is not limited to CertainTeed shingles. It’s called "resistance to shrinkage, and it’s the same process that causes concrete to crack. The upper surface loses volatile compounds quickly and this is what causes shrinkage.
In decent quality shingles it doesn’t appear for about 12 years or more depending on the warranty. In shingles with poor quality asphalt it may appear much earlier.
It will not cause leakage until the cracks extend clear through the shingles (and become “splits”). Even then, depending on crack location, there is usually another layer of shingles beneath the top layer. Typically, the underlying layer has much less cracking, since it’s not directly exposed to sun and weather and so shrinkage is slower.
Great info guys, I would not want to stick my neck out and tell a client that this deterioration probably won’t leak (even though it probably wouldn’t). Obviously a recommendation for further evaluation by a specialist but is anyone willing to share some first rate verbiage for this condition?
