My wife and I have been married for 20 years, have 2 children, and are proud homeowners in a lovely subdivision. A couple of years ago our roof developed black roof streaks so we called in a roofing company.

The owner of the roofing company said the black streaks were signs of wear and that we would need to have the roof replaced. We hired him to do the work and $8,000 later we had a new roof.

Awhile later, at work, my wife overheard a conversation about cleaning roofs. She confronted the person whom mentioned it and she found out that those black streaks were actually an airborne type of roof algae.

We were still in denial that we had replaced our roof prematurely, when our neighbor’s roof began developing the same black streaks. My wife told them what she had heard about roof cleaning. They found a company that offered low pressure roof cleaning and now their roof looks as good as our new roof, but they only spent a tenth of the cost. It was a tough and expensive lesson to learn but there isn’t much we can do about it now.