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3 Roof Styles Best Suited For Metal Roofing Materials

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The words "metal roofing" might bring to mind a shed roof, but metal roofing manufacturing has come a long way and grown the popularity of this versatile roofing material. Metal roofing is low maintenance, durable, and can be tinted a variety of colors. The metal roofing tiles can also be cut to resemble other types of roofing shingles such as wood or asphalt.

Choosing the right roofing for your home depends partly on the style of roof you have. It's important to pick a material with strengths that can offset any weaknesses of the architectural style's performance. There are a few key roof styles that work well with metal and are worth a discussion with your roofers.

Low-Slope Roofing

Metal roofing is excellent at helping rainwater and melting snow to drain off the roof and into the gutters. Low-slope roof styles need this assistance as the natural slope of the roof isn't sufficient to aid in drainage.

There are a variety of low-slope roof styles that range from the "flat" roof, which actually has a slight slope, and the mansard roof, which is the flat-topped style commonly seen on Victorian homes. The sides of a mansard roof are highly visible from the street so you might want to use slate or wood on those portions, but metal roofing on top can help with drainage and keep your overall project costs lower.

Why does metal roofing help so much with drainage? The slickness of the material is one factor, but another is the potential for standing seam roofing. The standing seam type of metal snaps together to form watertight seals and vertical seams that create valleys in between.

Hip and Valley Roofing

Hip roofs have two sets of parallel sides. The set on the sides of the house are steeper sloping, much like a gable roof, and are therefore decent at managing water drainage. The other set, on the front and back of the house, have a lower slope that should still manage decent drainage. The problem comes in when you have two wings of your house that come together and form a valley between the hipped roofs. The valleys are where water drainage can be problematic.

Metal roofing, particularly standing seam roofing, can help those valleys drain properly. Using the metal only in the valleys is a possibility since those aren't visible from the ground. You could then use wood or slate or even asphalt on the rest of the roof. Or you can use metal all over the entire roof, which has a rather large surface area, and keeps your project costs lower than slate.

Roofs with Multiple Dormers

You might notice a theme that metal roofing is great at draining water. But metal roofing is also great at keeping water out of hard to waterproof areas such as the sharp corners where roof segments come together. These sharp corners are often found on various types of roof styles that have dormers.

Dormers are architectural protrusions that include a window and provide more living space inside the home. Some homes have enough dormers to essentially form a new story. Depending on the style and setup of the dormers, the areas where the dormer roofs and the main roof come together can form sharp corners. And these sharp corners are harder to waterproof with other roofing materials, which aren't great at turning corners.

Metal roofing can be cut and bent to shape around sharp corners to provide waterproofing. The use of metal roofing can keep water out from under your roofing, where it would start to cause damage to both the tiles and the interior of your home. Contact a company, such as Cloise & Mike Construction Inc, for more information about metal roofing.