I'm not experiencing it myself. Perhaps the roofers who put NO TAR PAPER under my roofing shingles, on the foreman's instructions no doubt, were falling off the roof full of 'S' themselves.

You did see the "groucho" remark, didn't you? "Die reiuste freude ist die schadenfreude."

O! Those Marx Bros.! Were they ALL witty depressives? (Psychiatrist to patient: Tell me about your mother...)

There was no underlayment for your shingles??? When did this happen?

A year after we moved in I noticed that there was something weird about the garage roofline. The roof cap ended two feet short of the end of the roof. Duh! Did the roofer "run short" or "get caught short" or was it just the end of the day? They made it right and fortunately there was no water damage.

Pulte, among other production builders, followed a popular trend (I'm told) of the time in 1988 when they built this starter home we've endured for 19 years now. No underlayment. Saved them, what--$100.--per house? On one house it's not much, but if you multiply it by 400 million, or whatever, it puts a lot of green in the stockholders' pockets.

I've "enjoyed" the opportunity through the years to make a very long list of things that will never be done in the new/final home.

How would house wrap keep your windows from rattling? And wrap is just a moisture barrier, correct? It seems like a lack of insulation would make it drafy?

PinkToes, I understand that there are some parts of the country where no underlayment under the shingles is standard procedure. The underlayment serves primarily to "dry-in" the rest of the house until they get around to installing the shingles, and isn't really necessary to making a properly-installed roof function properly.

So, while I wouldn't suggest to anyone that leaving out the underlayment is a good idea, it's probably not going to be a problem for you. :)

solarpowered: Thanks for the encouragement, but that was on the current house--not the new one we'll be building. And it was a chronic problem beginning 6 years after it was built.

In our climate an underlayment is recommended to help protect the roof sheathing from any water that gets under the shingles (one bad shingle and you've got water intrusion). Since we get about 52" of rain a year, I think it does help. Plus, I think as I researched it, most shingle manufacturer's won't warranty their shingles without underlayment.