Morristown roofing company

Morristown at a glance

• County seat of Hamblen County, with 30,431 people at the 2020 census (Wikipedia).
• Incorporated in 1855. The East Tennessee and Virginia Railroad reached town in 1858.
• Downtown's Skymart, an overhead sidewalk along Main Street, was finished in 1967, the first second-story sidewalk system in an American city.

Source: Wikipedia, Morristown, unless noted.

Under the Skymart

Main Street's raised walkway was built after Turkey Creek flooded the downtown blocks in 1962 (Wikipedia). It still stands, and the brick buildings it ties together carry flat and low-slope roofs hidden behind parapet walls.

On a roof like that, water drains to a scupper or an inside drain, and one clogged outlet can pond an inch of rain over the whole deck. If you own a downtown building, look at the drains each fall. Check where the walkway meets your wall too, since that seam is a second roof edge most owners forget. Low-slope work is its own trade: see commercial roofing.

Houses from the factory years

For two or three generations Morristown was known as a furniture town, and the last major furniture maker cut 602 jobs when it closed. The houses built for those workers still line the streets around downtown. Many are modest frame or brick homes from the early and middle 1900s, often with a second roof laid over the first and a porch roof pitched lower than the main one.

That low porch slope is where we usually find the leak. Tear-off on these houses tends to turn up plank decking, and any board gone soft under the old layers gets replaced before anything else goes down.

Wind across Cherokee Lake

Cherokee Lake covers about 28,780 acres with nearly 400 miles of shoreline (Wikipedia), and a long stretch of it lies on Morristown's north side. A storm crossing that much open water reaches the first row of houses with nothing in the way. On a lake house, ridge caps and the shingles along the gable rakes go first. When those get replaced, ask for a shingle line rated for high wind, starter strip at the rakes, and the number of nails in each shingle.

Inside the city, the city's office

Morristown runs its own Building Inspections department. Its work, per the City of Morristown, is plan review, issuing building permits and inspecting construction inside the city. Outside city limits, Hamblen County's codes and regulations apply instead (Hamblen County).

Morristown is the county's only incorporated city, so the line is simple: a city address goes to the city office, and everything else in the county goes to the county. We check which one covers your house and pull whatever it requires.