All About New Jersey Roofing With Mike Holmes

Deegan Brothers Roofing • November 13, 2018

All About Roofs With Mike Holmes

Speaker 1: It is time to welcome Mike Holmes to CityLine. It's been too long. Come on up here. How are you?

Mike Holmes: I'm good and how are you?

Speaker 1: It's good to see you.

Mike Holmes: Good to see you. You're looking good as usual.

Speaker 1: Well so are you. I mean, I immediately noticed the slimmed down version of you in these overalls. Right? He looks like he's lost a few.

Mike Holmes: Just a couple pounds.

Speaker 1: Just a couple pounds. You look great. Okay. We want to spend a little bit of time today talking about roofing, okay. We know that you are the premier dude when it comes to fixing the homes and making sure everything is up to code. So, a lot of things can go wrong with a roof. We have a whole bunch of pictures of roofing problems, and then we're gonna talk about some options for solving them. So, let's start here. What is going on in this picture?

Mike Holmes: Well that's critters. Critters can get in there nice and easy and once they get in, lemme tell you what squirrels can do to your attic. They'll chew on all the electrical in there, nevermind move all the insulation. That can cause a lot of problems. So, we've had a rough winter. This is the time to take advantage and look at your roof. Too many people concentrating on what? That new kitchen.

Speaker 1: I know.

Mike Holmes: Forget it. Start with the outside, protect the inside, then move inside and do the kitchen, bathrooms and I I don't care what you do. Start with the outside.

Speaker 1: It's tough to spend that money on the stuff that you actually need that isn't gonna be pretty.

Mike Holmes: If your roof looks like this?

Speaker 1: But you have to do it.

Mike Holmes: That's not good.

Speaker 1: What's wrong with that?

Mike Holmes: That is a very old roof. It's been beaten by the sun, it's been beaten by the weather. It's starting to fall apart and too many people don't actually do anything about the roof until it's starting to leak inside the house.

Speaker 1: Okay.

Mike Holmes: This is why we need to address it from the outside.

Speaker 1: Well I asked you that 'cause that's what my roof looks like. (laughs)

Mike Holmes: Well you need a new roof.

Speaker 1: Okay. Good to know.

Mike Holmes: This is what we call a close valley. So that's the valley in the roof and you're seeing where the shingles join. One under-laps, the other overlaps, and you can see it's starting to curl and that's probably from a lot of snow. Again, too much snow, ice dams. It can get up underneath it and create a lot of damage, so you need to look at the signs that are talking. Your house is talking like your kid saying "My stomach's upset."

Speaker 1: Fix me.

Mike Holmes: It's talking to you. Listen to it. Call in a New Jersey Roofer.

Speaker 1: Next picture we have up, if you take a look at this... What's the issue there?

Mike Holmes: The flashing around the chimney, you can see the caulking's pretty good, but what we're doing is pointing out this is a vulnerable point to the roof. A lot of times water can easily penetrate that brick. Actually in a rainfall it'll penetrate the brick right to the back side in two hours.

Speaker 1: Oh wow.

Mike Holmes: So, if water can in around that and back down again and you pull that off and look at the sheeting underneath it, you're going to see a possibility of a lot of rot. So places to look on your roof is definitely the chimney, vent stacks and vents on top of your roof.

Speaker 1: Okay. So you say if you're having any of these problems you actually need to call a roofer. Let's talk a little bit about how you find, hire the right person for that job.

Mike Holmes: Yeah. I've said this a million times. If you think a pro is expensive, wait till you hire an amateur. That's the truth.

Speaker 1: Right.

Mike Holmes: See. Now we can look underneath that, what it looks like and it's so... To do a new roof is on average five to ten thousand dollars and you wanna look at that, and that's really smart money. If you don't do it right the first time, and you wait and you wait too long, the damage comes in, you're talking mold growth on the inside of your home, water damage and that price is now gonna escalate to 30 to 50 thousand dollars, depending on the damage.

Speaker 1: Ouch. Might as well go buy a new house. Not that you could get one in Canada for 30 to 50 thousand dollars.

Mike Holmes: I say do it from the outside, then work your way on the inside.

Speaker 1: How are you finding a good roofer? What credentials are you looking for?

Mike Holmes: There's a lot of roofers on the market. And I mean, there's a lot of good roofers on the market, but there's a lot of roofers that people are jumping into the business especially when it rains, it pours. They're gonna come in and these guys are just not good enough. You wanna ask all the right questions. You know the standard. Are you licensed? Are you insured? Are you covered by WSIB? Really important questions, but things like, you know if I do a new roof, do you wanna take the shingles off? Do wanna go over top of them? I wanna hear them say, we strip it every single time so we can take a look at the sheathing. You know, how busy are you? Can you start tomorrow? No pros can start tomorrow, so you gotta pay attention to that.

Speaker 1: Okay. Let's talk about some options you might wanna consider once you've got your roofer. You're happy with who you have, you've checked their credentials. There're all sorts of different ways you can go.

Mike Holmes: This is key and I like that. Here's a designer shingle. People like that because it really looks nice, but it's an asphalt shingle and we're used to the standard cedar that you put on the roof. I don't do that. It's big out West. It's going to turn green and that's a mold growth, but I wanna talk about this shingle for a second. That's an oil based product. It's really going to use a lot of environmental oil, increase the price of oil, not to mention it's extremely flammable. If there's a fire next door, the embers come across, land down on the roof and your house burns from the roof down. It can actually burn from the top down.

Speaker 1: Do most people have this? Like is it...

Mike Holmes: Almost everyone has an asphalt roof. I'm against it. We can move up to the latter and we can go into a clay tile. It's fake. This is manufactured, man made. It will last a long time, good on the winds. We can move into the metal roof, which I'm really big on. This you gonna see on a lot of barns, a lot of farms and it's just your standard... You've seen it. Long pieces of steel that come down, joined and ribbed vertically. Here's the big one that I wanna talk about.

Speaker 1: You love this one the best?

Mike Holmes: I do. The metal roof on the [inaudible 00:05:11]... And it looks like the shingle so you can make it look like shingles. The reason I wanna talk about the metal is it's guaranteed to last 50 years. Now a lot of people say to me, from asphalt to metal, especially one like this is gonna be two and a half to three times the cost.

Speaker 1: Right.

Mike Holmes: Don't look at it that way. If you look at how long that roof is gonna last, it's not going to last you a long time and bang for your buck, you're going to lose. You'll be replacing your roof three times with using this, compared to this, and right now that tells you, for the money this is where you go, and it's fire rated.

Speaker 1: How long is that gonna last you?

Mike Holmes: 50 years, takes the highest winds. This is a ceramic that's on top of this. It's a galv aluminum product, so it's going to last minimum 50 years.

Speaker 1: Okay. You know, excuse me if I wasn't asking the right questions. I was distracted by the bling in your ear.

Mike Holmes: Oh sorry about that.

Speaker 1: Look at that. They're awesome. Can I borrow them after?

Mike Holmes: Sure.

Speaker 1: We maybe do an exchange?

Mike Holmes: This is for my dad. This is for New Orleans.

Speaker 1: That's very cool. I like that. Listen, great information on the options out there. We love having you on the show. It's always good information. I think we really respect the fact that you keep everything to code. People are building at a crazy rate right now, so it's nice to know that people are following rules. Right?

Mike Holmes: Or above code. Maybe that's a minimum.

Speaker 1: That's the Mike Holmes way, right?

Mike Holmes: Yes.

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Thad: I'm Thad Barnett. Adam: And I'm Adam Mazzella. And we're gonna teach you everything you need to know about metal roofing. Thad: Welcome to Metal Roofing 101. Today's episode: What is a metal roof? I'm here at Deegan Roofing . Adam: Today, we'll focus on your typical types of metal roof, painted steel, painted aluminum metal roofs that we predominately deal with in the industry today. Thad: What makes a metal roof different from another type of roofing system like shingles, or tile, or something like that? Adam: Well, a shingle system is typically an asphalt-based system. Other systems can be made out of plastics, or rubbers, or things like that. A metal roof is just that. It's made out of a variety of different metals, generally coming from the earth. You've got steel, which comes out as ore, you've got aluminum, you've got copper, zinc, stainless steel, thing like that. And it's just your typical roof covering and from there it's a pretty wide range. You can have face-fasten systems, you've got glue-down metal roof systems, and the typical system that we deal with is a standing seam metal roof system. Typically, a concealed-fastener system. Thad: What about longevity? How long does metal roofing last? Adam: Your typical metal roof can range from a variety of years, 20, 30 years all the way up to hundreds of years. There's copper and zinc roofs in Europe, for instance, that have been around for 200, 300 plus years. Steel is still relatively young compared to those types of roof systems. So, a galvalume system, for instance, the MCA, or Metal Construction Association, has studies out that a galvalume roof will last an excess of 60 years. Thad: How about durability? How durable are metal roofing systems compared to other types of roofing systems. Adam: A metal roof is considered very durable when compared to other roofing systems. You can get an engineered metal roofing system that can last through really high-velocity winds, in excess of 150 mph. And you go down to the islands, down to South Florida, the Gulf Coast, things like that. After a storm, you see a lot of the roofs that held up were standing seam metal roofs. That's not to say that one's bad, one's good, there's certainly an economical factor that you have to think about went in there, but metal roofing systems are predominately hail-rated. We've got hail ratings on all of our metal roof systems, as well as all of our engineered metal roofing systems can sustain high winds and are all tested in excess of UL 90. Thad: So Adam, tell me about cost of the metal roofing. What is that like? Adam: Well the cost is gonna range as well. You have your kind of low-end, your face-fastened egg panel type system, 26-, 29-gauge. Those are gonna be the most inexpensive systems. Where it gets more complex and more complicated is kind of where is scales up from there. If you're talking a concealed-fastened system, a fastener flange system for instance, that's gonna be on the lower end. Next step up would be your typical snap-lock system and next step up would be a mechanical-lock system. That really varies, mostly because of labor. Now, there's other things that are gonna effect the cost of a roof. That would be the complexity or geometry that's involved in installing. It costs much more right now than your typical shingle roof. Lets say you're looking at a standing-seam roof for your house. You've got a bid on a shingle roof and then you got a bid on a standing-seam roof. And you look at it and you're saying, well my shingle roof is a third of the cost of the metal roof, or 40% of the cost of the metal roof, which is pretty typical, pretty standard stuff that we see, or our end users see. But you look at it. How long is your shingle roof gonna last? And depending on climate, could be 10 years, could be 20 years. Not much longer than that. Where a standing-seam roof, you know, like I said, they're lasting upwards of 40, 60+ years. If you look at the useful life cycle, metal actually, especially in today's dollars, and you factor in inflation, metal roof actually ends up being more cost-effective. But, it's also a larger investment upfront. Thad: How about warranties, when it comes to commercial or residential buildings? You can put metal roofs on both types, so what are the warranties like? Adam: Well, we offer several levels of warranties. You've got your finish warranties and your substrate warranties, as well as, our manufacturing warranties. I'll touch base on the substrate warranties. That's the metal, that's the metal only. That can be a bare metal or it can be a painted metal. We look at it like the metal's suppose to last 25, 25.5 years if it's a galvalume substrate. Our aluminum substrate warranty is a 20-year warranty and that just varies by the manufacture of the metal. Beyond that, you have your paint warranty. Sherwin Williams or Valspar, they offer us a 40-year finish warranty on all of our PDVF products. Beyond the finish warrant and beyond the substrate warranty, we also offer weathertight warranties. The weathertight warranty is an option for predominately commercial or multi-family, on up type options. Where we actually uphold the warranty for the duration of time, covering against leaks, repairs, things like that. Thad: How about maintenance of a metal roof? What is that like? Adam: Maintenance of a metal roof is gonna be similar to maintenance of any other roof. If you see debris up there, just clean them off. Typical metal roof maintenance is generally gonna be a little less than a shingle roof, especially if you look at the longevity of the roof. You're not having to worry about a shingle flying of here or there, a potential leak here or there. It's pretty specific to the flashing points, so you're gonna want to make sure that if you've got sealant on certain areas that it's not degrading over time due to UV exposure. If you've got pipe boots, which most every roof does, especially residential roofs, you're gonna wanna make sure that those are tightly sealed. These are all things that a typical roofing contractor can inspect for most homeowners, which we usually encourage homeowners to pass that on to a contractor to inspect or somebody that specializes in that. Thad: When it comes to metal roofing materials, steel, copper, zinc, how eco-friendly are these metal roofs? Adam: Metal roofs, in general, are all 100% recyclable. Now, that has an asterix with it, because there are other products that go into the roof itself that may not be, whether it's an asphalt-based underlayment, that's generally not recyclable. Occasionally, there's rubber products and things like that, butyl tapes and sealants that may not be recyclable. But, if you're strictly talking the metal, you can typically get it recycled. You get great scrape rates for steel, aluminum, copper, zinc, maybe not great for steel, but a lot of these other natural earth products are considered "precious-type metals". It's great that we can use them in architectural applications, because, when their useful life cycle ends, it can be recycled. Thad: We talked about a ton of information today about metal roofing. Check out online. We have an e-book called "The Metal Roofing Buyer's Guide", over a hundred pages worth of information. It's free. Get it in the description and what you can do it, this Metal Roofing 101 series, you can literally follow along with the e-book as we're going through these videos, learning about all these different topics. And everything we talked today will be in future episodes of Metal Roofing 101 and on the metal roofing channel. So, be sure to subscribe to stay in the loop.