I am thrilled to be a part of bringing you this gentlemen’s story of generosity and unconditional kindness. A company called River City Roofing runs a program called River City Roof Rescue. Owner Chris (Chrispy Workun) graciously agreed to be a guest blogger to tell you what River City Rescue is and how they help out in the community.
What got me into roofing? I started when I was 21. I was in a punk rock band called The Blame it’s at the time. We all started roofing because you made decent money and you got winters off. We used those winters to tour across Canada and record albums; it was a win win situation.
While the other guys found new careers and moved on I grew to enjoy the work; never looked back. Now 14 years later my business partner Jesse has his own company but we are working on merging the two and we have a couple of roofers that work on our team. It’s a small company with one crew we can guarantee to have at least one owner on site. When we decided to go out on our own we wanted to do so as ethical as we could. So when I pitched the idea of River City Roof Rescue, Jesse was immediately in and River City Roof Rescue was born.
RCRR is a program where we take $2 per bundle of roofing installed which is a bundle of shingles; usually 20 shingles per package/bundle and put it aside. When someone needs a repair but can’t afford it, we do it for free, using what we have set aside for materials. We will even redo a full roof if we have too if the money is there. So the more business we get, the more people we can help. All this is done in a non-exploitive way. We will not use their situation for our own gain. We understand that money is tight sometimes having been there ourselves. We want to help use our skills to help take stress off the table for as many people as we can.
I do more than run River City Roof Rescue. When there is a need I try to help when I can. When the Aviary was broken into I donated a keg to their fundraiser show so they could keep 100% of the money from the beer they sold
I am what we in the biz call a sloped roofer, as opposed to a flat roofer. There’s an age old argument between the two; one is the superior roofer. I never got caught up in that because we’re all roofers, we have one job and that’s to keep the weather out. Which I think is an extremely important job and I take that very seriously. So as a sloped roofer my job is very simple; take off the old shingles and put on the new ones. There are a few other steps involved but that’s basically all there is to it. It’s an easy job to learn but a hard job to master. It’s an exterior finishing job so it has to look as good as it functions. That means every cut has to be perfect, every nail placed correctly, every shingle lined up perfectly. Which seems easy enough but say you are doing a 50 bundle roof, that’s 1000 shingles, at least 4000 nails and 100 or so cuts. It gets pretty monotonous and tedious and it takes years of practice to be able to do all that as perfect as you can without zoning right out and completely messing it up.
So you need to get your roof done and you want to hire a contractor. There’s a ton that I can say on this but I don’t want this to act as a giant advertisement for me so I’ll keep it fairly generalized. First off, make sure to get a couple quotes. Different companies have different pricing so it’s a good idea to weigh your options. That being said remember that in many cases you get what you pay for so if you get a quote that is so much lower than the others, there’s probably a reason for that. Referrals are your best friend and ours as well. If you know someone that got a new roof and was happy with the work, the clean-up and the price that’s a great place to start. If you get a salesperson that makes you feel uncomfortable or tries to pressure you into a contract just walk away. There are a lot of greasy salesmen out there and you don’t have to put up with their crap. Talk to them, ask as many questions as you want and only proceed with hiring them once you feel comfortable. How much does your house cost to roof? This depends on several factors: Pitch of the roof. The steeper the roof, the more it costs. The average roof is a 4/12 pitch. That means that if you measure 12 inches horizontally from the peak it drops 4 inches. •style of the roof The more cut up and complicated the roof, the higher the cost. •access to your house If you a driveway that we can pull our trailer into as well as the loading truck for materials, that is our best case scenario. If there are power lines, trees, no driveway or a fenced yard. That means that we will have to carry the material up a ladder to the roof as well as drop all the garbage onto a tarp and walk it to the trailer and that will affect the cost as well. Then there’s the clean-up…the dreaded clean up that so many people hate to do. If you are asking friends for a referral make sure to ask how well the company did their clean up. It’s a simple concept; you make a mess, you clean it up. Something we’re all taught from childhood. We take a lot of time for our clean up, we get labourers to go on the ground and clean up as well as they can while we finish up the last touches on your roof. Once we are done we all go over the whole yard at least two more times to make sure we get every last scrap and nail. We even check your neighbour’s yards because plastics can blow away with wind and nails have a tendency to fall pretty far from the roof. The last thing that should happen is you getting a nail in the foot or knee while doing yard work or your kids playing outside. If you notice a company didn’t do this major part of the job well enough, make them come back and do it properly. The clean-up should match the roof…flawless and that’s all there is to it.
I am also a musician; my first band called the Blame It’s started in 1997 when I was 12, we are still together but don’t do much these days due to careers and family priorities. I started playing drums when I was 12 with Blame It’s then changed over to guitar about 12 years ago with them. I’m back playing drums in Screaming Targets and also play guitar in a band called Golden Years with my wife Lorette we are currently working on songs and not playing live. We have recording equipment so we write and record at home. The record from my band Screaming Targets, Carbon Copies. Carbon Screaming Targets was taken from a song called Screaming Target from the band Big Youth; it’s a cool tune
Everyone always asked about my name; the story behind my name goes back to when I was 15 years old. My first name is Chris and there were three Chris’s in our group of friends so we all got nicknames. I got random Chrispy and it stuck; all my teachers, friends and family even my parents called me Chrispy.
Chrispy can be reached at the following social media links
River City Roofing https://www.facebook.com/rivercityroofingedmonton/
The Blame It’s
Screaming Targets latest musical Release
https://m.sledisland.com/listen?id=2918&random=1
If you would like to see what people are saying about a specific company you can go here:
Homestars https://homestars.com
River City Roof Rescue in the news
mirella muses 