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We were searching for a roofing material that was recyclable, recycled, didn't
add any potential extra debris in our rainwater tank and
"affordable". Other than the issue of price, everything pointed
to metal roofing. Well, almost everything. Not only was it expensive, but
unless we opted the even more expensive "stone coated" version,
everyone warned us that it would be impossible to work on the roof, and
difficult to even walk on it, especially since the main roof is a 9:12 pitch (ie
quite steep).
We did briefly consider all roofing materials:
Wood - it rots and Cedar is a relatively rare tree. We didn't really
consider it.
Metal - of the various metal roofing materials, we only considered the
"stamped" products that look like shingles and the stone coated
versions of those. The cost is 3 to 5 times that of standard composition
roofing. The painter and the sider hated the idea of metal roofing,
although we're pretty sure the stone coated stuff would be fine for them.
But then, is it still recyclable, and do those little particles eventually come
off? (we assume so).
Fiber cement - these are not that popular here, although they are
available. One local roofing supplier said they didn't carry them because
they weren't reliable in this climate, due to freeze/thaw problems. We
understand they're more expensive than composition, and assume that they are at
least two times the cost, but we didn't really investigate further, and probably
should have.
Tile - beside being really heavy, tile would seem to have no advantage over
metal in this climate, since its primary advantages are slowing heat gain to the
roof and being a good fire barrier, both of which are not problems here.
Its also very expensive: we were told that it would be about four times the cost
of composition.
Ecoslate - there are various products made at least partially out of recycled
rubber, but we couldn't find out if they themselves were recyclable, and suspect
that they're not. We also worried about them leaching chemicals, but have
no evidence that they do, just the general concept that any organic material
tends to chemically break down.
Given that none of these choices were ideal, we revisited composition
roofing, and was somewhat surprised to find that there are much improved
products, including ones with 50 year warranties (although we're fairly
skeptical of any product with that long a warranty). The problem with this
was that we had already decided to use an SIP roof (see framing
for more on SIPs), which is an unvented roof that is generally frowned upon both
in building codes and by roofing manufacturers (for more on moisture issues,
including roof venting see the moisture
section.). We did find a product that was warranted for use on unvented
roofs, and because we didn't feel that composition roofing was an ideal roofing
either, we decided to compromise on the 40 year version because the added cost
was minimal.
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