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Suggest a roofer for a metal roof?
06/20/2017 10:36 AM by John M
I’m a Church Hill resident on 31st ST and was looking through the CHPN to try to find some recommendations for a good metal and copper roofer in the area — or, to post on the blog to see if I could get some recommendations. I didn’t have any luck with referrals in the CHA Newsletter.
Any thoughts on how I could get some roofer recommendations? I see a lot of copper and metal roofs in the neighborhood, so surely somebody must have had some good experiences. Could I put up a post on the CHPN? Or is there another/better forum for this type of thing?
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I recommend Joe Heller. He redid our copper porch roof in the old style.
(804) 368-7752
J.D. Heller Specialty Roofing & Carpentry
We used Hermitage Roofing for maintenance/repairs on our metal roof. Minus a couple of office errors, we were happy with the quality of their work.
Jamie Ryland specializes in metal roofing. 648-4525. He has an office on East Marshall, 2100 or 2200 block.
What was the problem with referrals in the CHA newsletter? They don’t list them in the paper anymore, but they are supposed to be online at their website.
I have used Ed Unser of City Tin and Copper – 804-366-5844 for two roofs. His work is excellent and he stands behind it 100%.
John
Jamie Ryland is a "old roof" specialist working in Church Hill. He did repairs to my box gutters on 27th St. I would ask him for an estimate. He’s very busy & hard to get hold of. 894-314-5372. My neighbor used RW Harper & Son.
I am not a roofer, so do your own research, but: The original terne metal (mixture of tin and lead) is not available anymore. Most of the replacement materials either won’t look like the original roof, are really expensive, or both. However, if it isn’t leaking, but is rusty/worn out looking, you can have it coated with “silver dollar”/fibered aluminum coating which generally looks pretty good if done properly. If it has really minor leaks, you might be able to just use this coating (even though it isn’t technically designed as a sealant). If you have leaks, you can patch them individually or coat the whole roof with a roofing cement/sealant type product. Once it has cured for a few months, you can apply the fibered aluminum/”silver dollar” over that to restore the original appearance.
In my experience, the cost of coating is usually in the high hundreds and rarely more than $2000 or $3000 dollars, assuming you don’t feel confident doing it yourself and you pay someone else. A new metal roof can cost anywhere from 5 to 15 times as much. However, it can also be hard to find a roofer that will be willing to recoat an existing roof because it is a relatively small job, and they usually won’t warranty the recoating for terribly long or at all. I have, on occasion, resorted to using a painter instead. It is also not that hard to figure out how to do yourself, but it’s pretty messy and physically demanding.
Again, do your own research. I have used Saunders roofing in the past and have generally been satisfied with their work, but have always gone with alternatives to metal because of the cost.
^^^ Sorry. Forgot to mention – and this is important – once you start coating with fibered aluminum, you want to keep doing it periodically, ideally BEFORE it becomes a problem again.
Hurtless brothers did ours as a repair job and it was affordable and it fixed my water leaks and gave a me a 3 year warranty on repairs if new roof they give like a 20 year warranty.
Saunders Roofing. Good work on our tin roof.
@crd — The referrals on the newsletter are where I started, but having tried all of them, I found that 1) the number is no longer in service or 2) the person never responded.
Hertless is my go-to roofer for everything.
I concur on the Jamie Ryland recommdation. Here’s the last # I had:
804-648-4525
@11 bds, thanks for that info.
Ed Unser w/ City Tin and Copper is awesome and did a great job on our new copper porch roof, although the picture above looks like a tin roof. Unless you have $$$$ you’re probably better off trying to repair it on a roof that large.
Saunders Roofing was easy to work with and they provided a decent warranty.