Mountain View Stone Coated Pipe Flashings and Vents

Start with the pitch. If the house is one of the Monta Loma Eichlers or another low-slope design, the roof is probably a membrane or foam system, and what goes around a pipe on it is a call for the roofer who works on that kind of roof. Our parts are at home on sloped roofs covered in shingle or shake, which is what you will find on the older cottages around downtown and on plenty of other houses across the city.

Next, look at what comes through the roof. An older cottage in Old Mountain View tends to carry more than pipes: a skylight, a valley or two, and a wall where an addition meets the original roof. Those details call for stone coated flashings in valley, skylight and roof to wall shapes, along with the plumber jacks.

A newer townhome is a different count. Stacked units mean several plumbing vents, flues and exhaust vents on each building, all lined up along a shared roofline where any mismatch repeats down the row. That is where our stone coated vents (low profile O'Hagins, elbow vents, vent caps, heat pipes, double wall vent pipe) and a consistent color across every building do the most good.

Homes closer to Shoreline feel the steady afternoon breeze off the bay, the same one that fills the sails on Shoreline Lake, and the gray marine air that drifts in on summer mornings. Wind pushes winter rain sideways into the joint at the base of each pipe. Damp air goes to work on bare galvanized, and on painted steel as soon as the paint chips.

That is where the finish itself matters more than the color. Our stone coated products are described in our own materials as rust, rot, algae, and fire resistant, with no chipping and no fading, and our plumbing flashings are sealed water tight at the seam of the cone with an adhesive that bonds with the metal. Painted jacks offer none of that, because spray paint cannot close a leaking cone seam no matter how many coats go on. The longer version of that argument is on our why stone coat page.

Nearly every house in Mountain View has at least one plumbing vent through the roof, and it is often the pipe you notice first. The Rapid Sleeve was designed around it. It is a 10 inch metal pipe sleeve with an elongated drip cap at the top and a lower flare at the base, and our flyer says it perfectly seals any plumber vent. Our video for it is titled "Slide on done", which is about as short as an install description gets.

What it replaces is a long list of small headaches. The flyer names them in one breath: rubber collars, spray paint, broken sealant, leaks, overspray, rust, callbacks and failed granulated sock covers. On a Mountain View rowhouse with several plumbing vents in a line, every one of those problems gets multiplied. Swap them for sleeves coated in the shingle color and the pipes stop drawing the eye from the sidewalk and from the neighbors' upstairs windows. The old homeowner brochure's line fits here too: no more ugly pipes sticking out of your roof.