New Roof

When Reuben and I purchased our house 3 years ago, our home inspector told us that our roof had about 2-3 years of life left. This past winter, we found shingles and pieces of tar paper as we shoveled the snow and when the snow all melted, we realized this was the summer we were going to have to make the big purchasing decision of what roof to put on our hundred year old house.

Our Decision Making Process:
Anyone that knows us as couple knows a little about our process of making purchasing decisions. I have never met a couple that does things quite the same way as Reuben and I. We are very hesitant before buying anything, and I mean ANYTHING. Before making any decision (big or small), we weigh a lot of factors and usually each decision has a different priority. We agonize over our purchases because we realize that how we spend our money is a voting tool more powerful than any election process and who we support through our purchases says a lot about our values.

After evaluating our process many times (because it is a very frustrating, lengthy process), we realize that we are better off for it in our value of simplicity – simply because the process itself of buying something, keeps us from buying something. Our house, after 3 years, still sometimes feels like we moved in a few months ago. It takes years to put a room together as we look for used, good quality furniture or the perfect fabric that’s on sale or find time to strip the original trim rather than buy something new at Home Depot (the reason our bathroom renovation went on and on). Through this process, we’ve learned to practice contentment. It’s not always fun living with a half-stripped bathroom door in the dining room but in the end, who cares? Whenever we do finish a room in our house, we are 100% satisfied with our final decisions and look forward to having that room for many years.

Our Roof:
When it came to dropping thousands of dollars on a functional item like our roof, our purchasing decision making process went the same way. For a roof, environmental sustainability and longevity to us were our priority factors. Which meant that asphalt was out of the question from the start. We were prepared to pay 2x the price of asphalt to have something that would last 5x longer. Asphalt is an environmentally detrimental product rather than sustainable – it isn’t made out of recycled material and it is almost 100% trash when it’s done (to the tune of 30 BILLION tons of asphalt every year). And it doesn’t last long. You can get 30 year shingles but good luck getting a warranty that actually covers more than 5 years. Also, when it came to cost, asphalt wasn’t that much different than some other options (it was more expensive than steel). We got a quote for asphalt just to compare the cost but considering that an asphalt contractor would have to work on a 12/12 pitch roof (45 degree angle), in close proximity to our neighbours, and strip 3 layers of shingles (including the original cedar shakes), the quote was outrageous for such a cheap product – asphalt contractors could do 5 roofs in the time it would take to do ours and the price reflected this.

So we turned our attention to metal. We had seen steel roofs at the local Home Show and around town. We didn’t really like the look of many steel roofs – very bulky – and we were afraid of the noise in our cathedral ceiling attic. Benefits of steel/metal roofing: fire resistant, long lasting (50 year transferable warranty), resistant to mildew and rot, lightweight, and they minimize midday heat which promotes energy efficiency, made out a partially recycled material and are recyclable at their end of life. There are some disadvantages to metal:
- they are noisier,
- they fade and don’t look their best after even 5 years, and
- metal extraction, refining, and production and transport of metal roof components is energy-intensive and almost always a – non-local activity.
We got a quote and even looked at some houses that had metal roofs installed by the same company. Great referrals but we could see that even after 5 years of being done, the roof just didn’t look that great. The granules on the surface of the metal became patchy and the roofs were fading in an uneven fashion. Even though the roof would last a long time, if we sold the house, the new homeowner may just want to replace it for looks.

So we checked out aluminum. Aluminum is one of the longest lasting metals and is very lightweight, corrosion-resistant, and has high reflectivity, which may help increase a building’s energy efficiency. The aluminum products we looked at didn’t fade and looked amazing. They were installed as shingles, instead of sheets, and didn’t look nearly as bulky. We loved the look of aluminum and it had the same benefits as metal. One big drawback – the price. A quote on aluminum was at least 30% more than any other product and had the same warranty. If our house was in a nicer neighbourhood, maybe we would have considered it longer but the price alone was astronomical. Also, according to some research, aluminum may not be that much of a “green” choice because of metal extraction etc. Aluminum is just too high quality of a product to be used on a roof.

With these comparisons, we were about to make the call to get a metal roof until we did a little more googling and found Authentic Roof, a synthetic slate product made out of a “proprietary thermopolymer olefin compound” = plastic (mostly recycled postindustrial waste from auto-industry products). After reading their website, we thought the price would be way out of our range – the advantages to the product were huge. They are lightweight. They have the highest impact resistance rating and fire rating that is possible. They have a 110 mph wind resistance rating. They are UV protected and have a 50 year transferable warranty. They are made out of mostly recycled product and are also 100% recyclable at the end of their life (which we were assured would be way more than the 50 year warranty). When we contacted the company we learned a little more: the product is made locally – it is made in 2 towns that are within a 2 hour driving distance from our house. The headquarters of the company are actually located 4 blocks away from us in Hamilton! We couldn’t believe one roof could have so many advantages and also look absolutely amazing!

The company, Crowe Building Products, recommended we contact Casper Roofing and Renovations for a quote. We pretty much discarded our hopes before they got here, thinking this was just going be like the aluminum roof – way too high a price to pay. The guys who came to give us a quote, Casper and Dave, were very nice men and they knew the product. They had installed it many times before and gave us some addresses to check out to look at the product on a local roof. They explained that since the tiles had to be hand-nailed, it was a long process and we were looking at about a 5-8 day job on our roof. Our hopes were slowly disappearing – 8 days on our roof, this wasn’t going to be cheap. They wrote a number on the back of their business card and we looked at it in disbelief – about 15% more than the asphalt quote we got! We were ecstatic – we had found our roof!

Casper and Dave were quick at setting up dates to complete the job. Total, the job took about 3 weeks due to weather (heat and rain) and about a week in between the completion of the new roof and installing the eaves trough (to give Reuben time to scrape old paint, clean, repair, and re-paint our fascia prior to installing the eaves trough). We absolutely love our new roof and feel a sense of peace with our decision making process in this big purchase. We plan to live here a long time and will certainly enjoy the benefits of the product.

Here’s some pictures:
I can’t find a before picture but if you go to google streetview and search 106 Myrtle Ave Hamilton you can see it!


Here’s our finished roof, eavestrough and the picture also includes our new windows (which are all open as the smell of caulking needed to be aired out!):