Roof Replacement in Estacada, OR
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A house has its roof open for a day every few decades, and Oregon's home-hardening guide is written for that day. The guide, published by Oregon's building codes agency, walks through the parts of a house that let a wildfire in and explains what can be done about each when they are being replaced. The shingles are the part it has least to say about, because fiberglass asphalt shingles already carry Class A, the highest of the three fire ratings. What it has most to say about are the openings around the roof, the vents at the eaves and in the attic, the valleys, the gutters, the gaps at the roof edge, and every one of those is easiest to change, or only possible to change, on the day the old roof is off, and the deck is bare. In Estacada, that day comes with a choice the rest of the metro has less reason to make.
The reason is on the city's own website, which has carried a standing notice on the fires in the national forest east of town since August 2026. The fire that matters most to the question was the Riverside Fire of September 2020, which put the city itself under a Level 3 order and burned to the edge of town. The fires of 2026, the Austin Fire among them, have stayed 25 miles up the Clackamas and have not reached the city. Between those two summers, the vents on an Estacada roof have not changed unless the roof was open.
What a 3-foot front fence is
The vents come first. The state's wildfire standard, and the guide that follows it, do not want ordinary vents on the underside of eaves and soffits at all unless they are 12 feet or more above the ground or "manufactured to resist the intrusion of flame and burning embers," and want every other attic vent covered with metal mesh between a sixteenth and an eighth of an inch. The guide's own retrofit advice is blunter: "If 1/4-inch mesh screening is present, replace or add, at a minimum, a 1/8-inch noncombustible corrosion-resistant metal mesh screen," and "consider replacing vents with a flame- and ember-resistant option." A quarter-inch screen is the common size for existing soffit and gable vents, and the ember-resistant vents the guide points to, tested under the standard ASTM E2886, are made in the same soffit, gable, and dormer shapes as the ones they replace. On a re-roof, the ridge vent is new in any case; the eave and gable vents are the ones that get changed only if someone decides to.
The valleys come second. The standard requires valley flashing of at least 26-gauge galvanized steel, laid over a 36-inch width of heavy mineral-surfaced cap sheet running the length of the valley, in place of the membrane alone. Third are the gutters: where they are provided, they are to be noncombustible, which in practice means metal rather than vinyl, with "an approved means to prevent accumulation of leaves and debris." Vinyl gutters drop off the wall when the debris in them burns; metal ones stay up, which is why the debris has to be kept out of them either way. Fourth is the eave. The guide's advice is to inspect the open eaves for gaps an ember could pass through into the attic and fill them with durable caulk, and on a re-roof that walk is made with the drip edge off and the fascia in plain view. On the shingles themselves, the guide's roofing page says fiberglass composition shingles are Class A, so that side needs nothing.
What is required, and who decides
None of this is required in Estacada. The state's wildfire construction standard, Section R327 of the residential code, applies only where a city or county adopts it, and Estacada has not done so; a 2025 state law provides that the standard "may only be applied to new construction of new buildings." On an Estacada re-roof, the four items above are what the state's codes agency calls voluntary compliance, home-hardening measures that "may be voluntarily followed for new construction, and when replacing exterior elements of existing construction," and the guide is the document an owner can decide from.
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Roof replacement questions from Estacada, OR
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We have a wealth of experience working as main building contractors on all kinds of projects, big and small, from home maintenance and improvements to extensions, refurbishments and new builds.
Four options for one open day
On an Estacada roof, VResh Construction quotes the guide's four items separately, and the owner chooses which of them the open day is used for. Call or text (503) 272-6436.