Florida Keys specifics · How We Work Here
Four Hours Away, Working Here in Blocks
We are Fort Lauderdale based and work Monroe County in scheduled blocks with crews lodged locally. On a chain where a lot of unfamiliar companies work, being plain about that matters.
Give us the mile marker, tell us what is on the roof now, and say whether the property is rented out. Those three shape the job.
Metal
Down here it is the normal answer, not the upsell
Load path
At these wind speeds the covering is not the real question
Out too
The old roof has to travel the whole chain to leave
Licensed
A licensed Florida general contractor
The crew that drives down and back
A team commuting from the mainland loses most of the working day to the road, and it shows in how the job runs — short days, slow progress, and an unwillingness to push through the difficult part of a roof because there is a four-hour drive waiting. The alternative is a crew that is here for the block, starts early, and is on the roof the morning after a delivery rather than three days later.
How a job runs with us
- An inspection in the diary, with a person up on the covering itself.
- Photographs of what we found, handed over either way.
- A scope set down in writing before the conversation turns to price.
- Metal priced alongside whatever else is being considered.
- A rate for replacing bad decking, signed off while the roof is still shut.
- Everything ordered before we start, disposal planned with it.
- Our own crews, lodged here, working the job through.
Licensing, and how to check it
Romco Builders is a licensed Florida general contractor. Roofing work is performed under the appropriate trade certification, as Florida law requires.
Ask us for the license details and verify them with the state before signing anything — with us or with anyone else. In a county where a great many companies work from somewhere else, that check takes five minutes and is worth making on every quote.
How we handle it
- 01Inspect and report before quoting anything at all.
- 02Settle every rate that could move while nobody yet knows the quantity.
- 03Pull the permit as contractor of record for the address.
- 04Never open more roof in a day than we can dry in before stopping.
The photographs go to you whether or not you use us. Occasionally that produces a report which helps somebody decide their roof has a few seasons left, which is a perfectly good outcome and a cheaper one for them than the alternative.
Said plainly
Where we stop
We are not local, we do not do emergency response in Monroe County, we do not perform wind mitigation inspections, and we do not negotiate with insurers. We also cannot start next week. If any of that is what you need, better to know it now than after a survey.
FAQ
Common questions
- Are you local to the Keys?
- No. We are Fort Lauderdale based and work Monroe County in scheduled blocks with the crew lodged locally. Saying so beats inventing a local address we have never occupied. A local company will start sooner and that is a fair reason to use one.
- How should I check any roofing contractor here?
- Get the license details and verify them with the state yourself rather than accepting a printed document, and ask how long they have actually been working in this county. Both are quick. Do it on every quote, ours included.
- What if more decking is damaged than expected?
- The rate is agreed in the quote before anyone knows the quantity, so it is not a surprise. We photograph what we find as the covering comes off.
- Do you handle the permit?
- We do, as contractor of record, filed with whichever authority covers the address. Be cautious of anyone asking you to pull an owner-builder permit for work they are performing.
Roofs we work on
Metal Roofs
Metal leads this list because in Monroe County it is the ordinary choice rather than the expensive one. What separates a twenty-five year metal roof from a twelve year one is almost never the panel.
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Flat & Low Slope
A great deal of Keys building stock is concrete with a flat or very low slope roof. Those roofs fail at drainage and at edges rather than across the field, and coating is the answer offered far more often than it is the right one.
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Tile Roofs
Tile appears throughout the Keys and it asks more of a building here than it does further north. Fastening is the whole conversation, and the underlayment beneath decides when the roof needs doing.
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Shingle Roofs
Shingle exists throughout the Keys and it works when it is chosen and installed deliberately. In the county with Florida's highest design wind speeds, it is the specification that ought to be explained rather than assumed.
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Leak Diagnosis
Water enters at one point and appears somewhere else. On the concrete and parapet buildings common here it can travel a long way inside a wall before anybody sees anything.
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Deck, Fastening & Uplift
The covering takes the sun and the rain. The fastening underneath is what keeps the roof on the building, and in the county with the highest design pressures in Florida that is where the job is won or lost.
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More florida keys specifics
Metal Is the Default
In most of Florida a roofer works up from shingle to metal and metal is the premium option. In the Keys that ordering is reversed, and shingle is the specification that ought to arrive with an explanation.
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The Load Path
Monroe County carries the highest design wind speeds in Florida. What decides how a roof performs is not principally the material on top — it is whether the whole assembly stays connected to the building.
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Tear-Off Has to Leave
Roofing is the heaviest trade in construction. A re-roof brings tons of material in and sends tons of tear-off out, and on an island chain the outbound leg is a genuine cost rather than a short trip.
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Next step
Find out what is actually wrong with it.
An inspection, photographs of what we found, and a written scope. If the honest answer is that it can wait another season, that is the answer you will get.