How to Choose a New Roof for Your Home

There are a lot of different types of roofing materials that can be used to build you a new roof today (e.g., asphalt, wood, composite, slate, concrete, clay). While you’ll want to look at style, your roofing company wants you to also remember to consider weight and installation requirements while staying within your budget.

Understanding Roofing Terminology

When you’re talking to a roofing company about your new roof, you’ll notice that the roofing company uses a lot of terminologies (e.g., “squares” instead of square feet). Before setting up an appointment to discuss your roof, you may want to familiarize yourself with some of these terms so that you understand what the roofing company is talking about when discussing putting a roof on your home.

Considering the Cost of a New Roof

There are many things you must take into consideration to determine the cost of a new roof.According to a roofing company, these things include:

Will you need to strip old materials from your roof? If so, you may discover that the supporting structure needs some repair work.

What shape is your roof? (e.g., gable roofs are less expensive than a roof that has numerous breaks in its planes)

How much do the materials cost?

Numerous materials are available to use on your roof today. While this is true, you should know that not all these materials can be used on every roof. Therefore, you need to stop and look at these various materials.

Asphalt

This is the most commonly used material because it’s easy and inexpensive to install. It’s manufactured from a fiberglass medium with asphalt inside of it and sand-like granules on the surface. Asphalt is then configured in one of two ways. The first is a thick, laminated product that lasts for around 25 years. There’s also your standard single-thickness variety which costs about half as much and lasts about half as long as this other type.

Wood

For centuries, wood (e.g., cedar, redwood, southern pine) was the main type of roofing used on homes and buildings. It’s still a good choice when the fire code permits its use. These roofs last around 25 years.

Metal

These materials (e.g., aluminum, steel, copper, copper-and-asphalt, lead) make really durable roofs. Their only real drawback is how expensive they are. While most of the metal roofs you see are manufactured from lead or a combination of copper and asphalt, there are other types that are manufactured specifically for seamed roofs with vertical lengths of metal that must be soldered together. These roofs are quite a bit more expensive than other types of roofs that are available today.

Tile and Cement

These materials are popular if you have either a Mission-style or Spanish Colonial style of home. These materials are what give these roofs a wavy look. Both tile and cement are very durable, but they’re also very expensive and heavy.

Slate

Typically, this is one of the most durable roofing materials. However, not all slate is the same since it comes from different quarries throughout the United States. Nevertheless, the slate will typically outlast the fasteners that are used alongside it. This is why you’ll find some 100-year-old slate being recycled and reinstalled to last for another century. While this is great, the drawbacks are that it’s very heavy and expensive.

Choosing the Right Materials for Your New Roof

When you’re ready to put a new roof on your home, get in touch with us at the Avatar Roofing company in Tampa, FL so that our experts can walk you through the entire process. This is something we’ve been helping people with for many years now, and we look forward to helping you as well, so contact us today.