When the old roof comes off a Dolphin Roofing job, someone from the owner’s family is usually on site.
That is deliberate. The owner wants a person he trusts there while the roof is torn off and rebuilt, and he names two things that person checks: “making sure the wood is done properly, making sure the fastening is done properly.” Once the deck is sound and the roof is covered, the shingle, tile or metal can go back on. For him, the most important moment comes right after tear-off, when the first course of the put-back goes down.
He has no partners. His son and sons-in-law work with him, and the crews who do the roofing are not family. But the person overseeing the job, he says, is usually a relative. The work has to pass inspection either way. He wants it right because of what happens when it isn’t. “When jobs are not done properly then mistakes happen, and then it’s more money in the long run,” he says.
The arrangement mirrors how he came up. He grew up in a family of roofers in Ohio, where his mother’s brothers and his father’s brothers worked in the trade and their children followed them into it. When he was 13 or 14, his father moved to New Jersey, and that is where he says he learned roofing. His father was his mentor and is still in the business. They work together, and the son helps him out, though his father no longer goes up on the roofs. The owner’s plan for Dolphin Roofing is to keep growing it and hand it down.
He holds firm views about the parts of a roof nobody sees. Tile and metal, he says, are mostly for looks; they are not what keeps water out. That job falls to the underlayment beneath them. He tells homeowners that a single layer will not last, and that skipping a double or triple layer means putting on another roof not long after.
The company is based in Oakland Park and works across Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties. Much of its work is commercial and industrial, and the owner says it took on some big jobs during the pandemic, while also doing residential roofs. For larger commercial buildings such as warehouses and shopping centers, crews have traveled as far as Orlando and Fort Myers.
Flat roofs are a staple. A property company that owns several multifamily buildings noted in a review that on larger flat roofs the owner has the materials adhered with a hot mop, which it credited with adding years to a roof’s life.
The family member on the tear-off is one check. The other is the owner himself, who says he is the one behind the standard. “They see the way I do things,” he says, “and they know if it’s not done the way I’m going to do it, they’re going to have an issue with me.”