Weight per square is a range, not a constant
Asphalt shingles are sold by coverage, not by weight, and the weight of a square varies with the product and with how much granule and moisture it has picked up over twenty years. The figures used here as defaults are working middles: about 225 pounds per square for three-tab, 275 for architectural laminate, and 400 for the heavy designer profiles. Real products sit anywhere from around 200 to well over 450. Wood shake runs near 350, and tile and slate are in a different category entirely at several times that.
If the number matters, weigh something. A bathroom scale and one bundle from the tear-off gives you a better figure than any table. Where it matters most is at a container weight limit, because going over is charged by the ton and the overage rate is rarely gentle.
Layers, and what a second layer tells you
Count the courses at a rake edge or at the eave where the shingle steps are visible. Two layers doubles the tear-off weight and roughly doubles the labour, but the more important thing it tells you is that nobody has seen the sheathing since the first roof went on. Deck damage that would have been found during a normal tear-off has instead been quietly getting worse under a second layer, and it was carrying the extra weight the whole time. The sheathing field on this page exists because the honest answer to how much deck you will replace is usually more than zero and you find out on the day.
Weight limit against volume limit
Containers have both, and roofing debris hits the weight limit first. This is the opposite of most demolition waste. A container full of framing lumber or drywall runs out of room long before it runs out of weight allowance, so people size containers by volume out of habit and then get a bill for tonnage. The calculator computes both and tells you which one binds.
| Debris | Which limit binds first |
|---|---|
| Asphalt tear-off | Weight, usually well before the container looks full |
| Tile or slate | Weight, dramatically |
| Metal panel | Volume — it is light and it does not compact |
| Deck sheathing and framing | Volume |
The loose volume per square used here is a rough figure and it is the input most worth adjusting. Tear-off does not stack. Torn shingle comes off in irregular pieces with nails sticking out of them, and it fills space far less efficiently than the neat bundles it arrived in.
Hauling it yourself
The payload field will tell you how many trips a truck or trailer would take, and the answer is usually more than people expect, because two and a half tons is well beyond what a half-ton pickup should carry and roofing debris reaches that weight in a volume that still looks like an empty bed. If you are considering hauling, check what the vehicle is actually rated to carry with the towing and payload calculator before assuming it fits in two loads.
The part that is not about weight
A tear-off puts people on a roof, repeatedly, carrying loads, on a surface that is progressively covered in loose granules and old nails. Falls from roofs kill and permanently disable people every year, and the danger does not scale down with the size of the job: a small tear-off on a steep roof is more dangerous than a large one on a shallow one. A wet roof, a frosted roof, a steep roof or a high roof is not a do-it-yourself job. This page can compute what comes off and how heavy it is. It cannot make a roof safe to stand on, and no amount of planning the material changes that. If the roof itself is the reason you are doing the work, the shingle side of the new roof is in the roofing squares calculator and what goes down before the shingles is in the underlayment and drip edge calculator.
Questions people ask
How much does a square of shingles weigh?
Roughly 225 pounds for three-tab and 250 to 300 for most architectural laminates, which is why a bundle at a third of a square is a 70 to 100 pound lift. Heavier designer profiles reach 400 and above. Those are new-product figures; a tear-off carries the felt, the nails and whatever moisture is in it, which is what the extras percentage on this page is for. The one number you can rely on is the one you get by weighing a bundle off your own roof.
What size container do I need for a roof?
It depends on the weight allowance more than the size, and the two are usually quoted separately. A container advertised as 20 cubic yards might include three tons; a roof that generates four tons will fill the allowance and leave the container looking half empty. Ask for the weight allowance and the per-ton overage rate, then compare against the tonnage this page gives you. If the numbers are close, the cheaper move is often a smaller container swapped twice rather than one large one over its limit.
Can I put a second layer on instead of tearing off?
Sometimes it is permitted and sometimes it is not, and the answer comes from the building department with authority over your work rather than from a rule of thumb. What is worth weighing independent of permission is what you give up: you never see the deck, the new roof follows every irregularity in the old one, the added weight sits on structure sized long ago, and the eventual tear-off costs twice as much. Manufacturers also have their own position on warranty over an existing layer.
Does the pitch change the tear-off weight?
It changes the area, which changes the weight. A 1,120 square foot footprint at 6/12 is 1,252 square feet of roof surface, about 12 percent more than the plan area, and every pound of that is real. Pitch also changes the work substantially: steeper roofs mean debris has to be controlled rather than allowed to slide, which slows everything down. The roof pitch calculator will give you the multiplier if you want to check it independently.
Where do old shingles actually go?
That varies by region. Some transfer stations take asphalt shingles as ordinary construction waste, some have a separate rate for them, and some areas have recycling for asphalt shingle into paving material, which usually requires the load to be free of wood, nails and other debris to qualify. Call the facility before you load, because the difference between a clean shingle load and a mixed load can be substantial on the ticket, and separating on the ground afterwards is miserable work.