OK, I know we have to keep the rain out but it seems to me that using individual shingles is such an enormous waste. Each shingle must be carefully placed and nailed into place. When the roof is being repaired, the shingles must be painstakingly removed.
Why not use a large roll of material to cover a roof? Why haven’t our good friends in the petrochemical industry developed a lightweight roofing material? What would be the disadvantage of this?
I once had a garden shed roofed with roofing felt. Along came a severe gale and ripped the entire lot off. I wouldn’t want that to happen to my house.
WAG To protect the house and contents from wind, rain, snow, and hail damage?
Thatched roofs were replaced with wood (cedar shakes), ceramic tiles in some areas, slate shingles, and later composition asphalt shingles.
Today you can get synthetic material for flat roofs that are durable, leak tight, and could possibly be applied to pitched roofs.
Aluminum with baked on enamel finish is available in colors. Comes in wide rolls to be custom cut to fit your roof. Alleged to be long lasting, leak tight, and durable.
Additional current systems may be found via googling for roofing, shingles, tiles, etc.
Covering a roof with a single large membrane would make the occasional patch job a near impossibility. With shingles, you can patch the underlayment and add new shingles so that the finished job seamlessly blends in and becomes invisible. Also, a single roll of material that had the necessary weight and durability would probably be so heavy and unwieldy that the job would be extremely difficult. I just built myself a garden shed this spring and roofed it like a house, and it was hard enough carrying a dozen strips of shingles up the ladder.
Metal roofs are popular in WA. I’ve often wondered ho noisy they are in the rain.
Granularity. It’s easier and cheaper to repair a roof when you only have to fix a few tiles or shingles, rather than replace an entire large roof panel.
I always wondered why, at least in the Northeastern and Midwestern US, asphalt roof shingles are so popular. They’re not that attractive, and they have a cheap look. My roof has high-profile architectural ashpalt shingles, and even then it seems cheap to me.
In the inner-ring eastern suburbs of Cleveland, many houses have slate shingles, even some modest homes built for middle-income occupants. Slate offers an impression of solidity and permanency that asphalt can’t match. However, I haven’t seen any houses around here built after the early 1950s with slate roofs.
Tile roofs seem quite common in the UK; it’s not just a warm weather roofing material. Why are tile roofs less common in cold-weather regions of the US?
They’re less expensive than slate. In CA a lot of houses had shake shingle roofs. These were outlawed (at least in some areas) because they catch fire easily. Asphalt shingles are more resistant to catching fire from embers that land on them than are wood ones.
There is roll roofing that is thinner than shingles but rolls out and has the little stones in it like shingles. It rolls out in maybe three-foot widths. But as mentioned, patch jobs would be more difficult. A felt-type (or that plastic kind that melts in high temperatures) underlayment would go down first and then the stony layer. It has edges that kind of melt together in the sun so no tar is needed.
Asphalt shingles are heavy… but slate is even heavier… after all, slate is slabs of rock. If your roof deck/sheathing (is it called a deck if it slopes?) and framing aren’t designed for the weight of slate in addition to all the other loads it has to support (snow, etc), and you add it later, you could have problems.
Another thing about asphalt shingles is that when re-roofing the first time or so, you can just go over the old shingles and nail right through them. After two or three layers, when reroofing it’s generally a good idea to take all the old shingles off, go down to the plywood roof sheathing underneath, look for holes there, and place just the new layer of shingles on.
Yes, I can’t understand why dudes would roof their houses with *kindling wood. * :eek: :rolleyes:
In the big Oakland fire, several houses were “somehow miraculously saved in the middle of others burnt to the ground”. In every case I saw, those houses who were “miraculously saved” had tile roofs, while shake roofs were extremely common in that area. Idiots. Fucking piling kindling wood on their roof in a high fire risk area, then not understanting “why me?” 'Cause you were a MORON, that’s why.
Some roofs *are * made with large sheets of corrugated iron or plexiglass.
With a large membrane, there would be less need for patches. Individual shingles are more likely to come loose. Plastic materials can be repaired with glue or heat. A large roll of asphalt might be very heavy but perhaps there are other lightweight materials out there. Another responder mentioned aluminum. That sounds interesting. How about a rubberized paint? Is there such a thing? What would be the disadvantages?
Clay tile has weight problems, too, although I really like tile roofs. A typical frame house not originally roofed with tiles wasn’t designed to support it, and it’s not an option. There are lightweight tiles intended to provide the same look as the real clay, but they tend to be fragile, and have to be walked on carefully. I replaced shakes with metal - enamel coated galvanized steel, and I like it. With the underfelt, it’s no noisier than the old roof. They are also very light. Clay tile will weigh in at something like 900 pounds per “square”. Composite shingle is more on the order of 300 pounds, and my metal tiles are 150 pounds, IIRC. That is pretty much in line with the comparison figures given here (scroll down):
It’s not just patching because a shingle has come loose, it may be patching in the sense of removing shingles to repair a leaky area, etc. That kind of patching would be harder to do once you cut the roll roofing.
Aluminum (corrugated) comes in 4x8 sheets but also looks low-budget. Standing seam roofs (sheets of metal that are bent together at a vertical seam) are a step up from corrugated.
It’s also that the single housing industry is VERY conservative. Steel frames are better, cheaper, safer and better for the forests that 2X4’s but 2X4 frames is what they know, and by damn, that’s what they’ll put in. :rolleyes:
And enameled metal panel is made with several appearances. Mine is meant to look like tile. This is what I have:
http://www.gerardusa.com/products/gerardtile.htm
Of course, my roof is on top of a little stucco bungalow, not a brick mansion.
A lot of steel roofs being put installed in this part of the country. With various colors, they look very nice and some of the real high dollar places are also using it.
Low maintenance, durable, looks good, is not a noise problem, can be laid right over an asphalt roof if it does not have too many layers, win - win - win all over the place hear abouts.
It is on our house out in the woods and it gives us a big brake on our homeowners insurance.
YMMV
This has happened to people in the UK. They have replaced their slate tiles with clay tiles and then wondered why their roof has started sagging. Somebody further up said that slate tiles are very heavy, they aren’t really. Because they are so thin they weigh much less than clay tiles.
I think people are underestimating the conservatism of the home buyer. I agree that a single-membrance roof is probably doable, but the problem is that people wouldn’t like how it would look. People know and expect shingles, and they’re available in a wide variety of colors and styles.
As to why slate isn’t more popular, it’s really an issue of cost. The fact that slate can last for centuries isn’t much of a selling point to people who typically stay in their house only about seven years.
In areas of the country where flat or low-pitch roofs are constructed, a lot of the cheaper construction just had tar and gravel roof coating. This is also typically done with commercial buildings. These days, this type of roof is sometimes being done with spray polyurethane foam. Again, this is more common in commercial buildings, but people are doing it to flat-roof “Eichler” style houses, and it seems to have some advantages - for one thing, it provides some insulation. This is a form of “one piece” application like the OP was asking about.
Our house has a low pitch (2/12) roof covered with “torch-down”. A flexible rubber material which comes in three-foot wide rolls is laid on the roof; the edges of adjacent strips are overlapped and heated with a propane torch to make them fuse together. The end result is a one-piece membrane covering the entire roof.
Then you coat the whole thing with an asphalt-based emulsion with aluminum pigments to protect it from UV.
Works fairly well. Ugly, though.