Not All Metal Roofing is Created Equal

Every house I go to will inevitably ask me about metal roofing, even if I am there because they called about shingles. Everyone is curious about them. They’ve heard how wonderful they are but think they probably can’t afford them. 

Metal Roofing, which was once relegated to only coastal towns, has made it’s way into the mainstream. And along with all of the good parts come the bad. 

Because so many people are looking at metal roofing there is a market for cheap, screw-through metal panels. To give you an idea of what this is: Take the tin off of a barn, paint it green and screw it down to someone’s home. 

They are infecting neighborhoods like a disease. Once it gets onto one house, it starts spreading, like poison ivy, onto others. Homeowners think they are great because it is a metal roof. The roofing company, for good reason, never told them that this type of metal was never meant for residential application and their house now looks like a cheap carport. 

To understand the problem with these types of roofing you have to realize that metal moves, much more so than shingles. It expands and contracts daily; it expands when it heats up during the day and contracts as it cools off at night. Then they take the metal, knowing it will expand and contract, and screw it down permanently to a hot plywood deck and guess what happens? That’s right, over time as it moves, it works those screws loose and the rubber or silicone grommets, which are all that is keeping the house dry, start cracking and allowing water to get in. 

You see, those types of metal roofs are fine for a metal structure or barn because they have open framing and rafters. You stick that crap on a house with an attic space and heat build up and it is a disaster waiting to happen. Not to mention the fact that you are putting thousands of holes straight through the metal. Common sense tells us that can’t be good. 

There are significant, and obvious, differences between cheap, screw-through metal roofing and real metal roofing. I’ll get into the exact differences in my next few posts, but for now just understand that not all metal roofing is created the same. 

Just because it is metal does not mean it is good, or even close to good.