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Every roof replacement contains a bet: nobody knows what the deck looks like until the old covering comes off. Handled properly, that unknown is carried as an allowance with a unit rate agreed in advance. Handled badly, it becomes a number produced on the last day, when the roof is open and the only two choices left are to agree or to leave it that way.
In short
It states how much decking replacement the price already covers. Work beyond it is billed at the agreed rate; work below it should come back off. If the contract does not say what happens when the allowance goes unused, it will not come back off.
01
Rarely across a whole deck. They concentrate: at valleys, around chimneys and skylights, at wall junctions where flashing was fitted badly, at eaves where gutters have overflowed for years, and under any low-slope tie-in. A contractor who has genuinely looked at your roof can usually tell you where the risk sits before starting.
02
Where the condition is, what it is, how much of it there is, the unit rate already written into the contract, the revised total, and a photograph. Signed before the work, not invoiced after it. If the process requires the owner in the loop before the crew carries on, that expectation belongs in the contract too.
03
One that arrives at the end with no photograph, no location, a rate never previously discussed, and a quantity you cannot check because the roof is finished. Finding several times the assumed decking is entirely possible. Being told about it for the first time on the invoice is not a discovery, it is a process failure.
Questions
Both exist. Genuine rot at eaves and valleys is common on older North Texas roofs. What separates the two is not suspicion, it is process: a rate agreed beforehand, a photographed location, and authorisation before the sheet goes down.
The contractor should stop at the boundary of the agreed scope and put the condition and the refusal in writing. Roofing over decking known to be rotten is the kind of decision that has to be documented, because it affects the warranty and the next owner.
Yes, and a competent crew can leave the roof weather-tight while you do. Dry-in exists precisely so that work can pause without exposing the house. Ask for the area to be photographed and made secure, then read what is being proposed properly. Pressure to decide on the spot, on the roof, is a negotiating position rather than a construction constraint — unless rain is genuinely imminent, and if that is the reason it should be the reason you are given.
Treat it as a conversation, not a record. Ask for the change in writing before the work proceeds, even if that means a photograph and a message: what the condition is, where it is, how much of it there is, the agreed rate, and the revised total. A text with a photograph attached is a perfectly good record. What produces an argument later is a verbal yes that neither side wrote down and both remember differently.
That is a different conversation and it should be named as one. A cracked vent, a damaged skylight, a broken tile on an adjoining surface or a mount pulled loose during tear-off is damage, not a concealed condition, and it does not belong on a change order as though it had been discovered. Photographs taken before the work started are what separate the two, which is another reason the pre-work record matters.
Assessment request
Short, routing-only questions. Nothing here asks you to diagnose the roof yourself.