Add-on page. Pages like this one are not part of the Designed build. They are $150 each, one time, for the questions you already answer on the phone every week. See what that covers.
Asphalt or metal?
We install both and we get asked this every week. The honest answer is that it depends on your roof and how long you are staying, and anyone who answers it the same way every time is selling rather than advising.
Cost, roughly
Standing seam metal typically runs somewhere around two to three times an asphalt roof of the same size. That is a real gap and it is the first thing worth being straight about.
What narrows it is time. An architectural asphalt roof in this climate is realistically a twenty to twenty-five year roof. Standing seam is a fifty year roof. If you are keeping the house, you are choosing between buying one roof or two.
How each behaves in a valley winter
Metal sheds. Snow slides off before it has a chance to build, melt from underneath and refreeze at the eave, which is the mechanism behind most ice dams. That is the single biggest argument for it here.
Asphalt holds. Snow sits, and whether that becomes a problem depends almost entirely on what is going on under the roof deck. A well ventilated, well sealed attic under asphalt will be fine for decades. A warm attic will dam every year regardless of what you spend on shingles.
That is the part people are surprised by: switching to metal to cure ice dams sometimes works, and sometimes just moves a ventilation problem somewhere more expensive. More on why dams form.
Where metal is the wrong answer
A cut-up roof with lots of valleys, dormers and penetrations. Every one of those is hand work, the labour climbs steeply, and the long clean runs that make metal shed well are exactly what you do not have. On that roof asphalt is usually the better buy.
Also anywhere a sliding load has nowhere safe to go. Entries, walkways, driveways and decks below a long slope need snow guards, and sometimes the honest answer is that the geometry does not suit it.
Where asphalt is the wrong answer
A simple, steep, long slope on a house you intend to keep for twenty years. That is metal's best case, and putting a third asphalt roof on it is a decision you will pay for twice.
What we would ask before answering
- How long do you plan to own the house?
- Is the attic ventilated and air sealed, or unknown?
- How cut up is the roof, and how many penetrations?
- What is directly below the eaves you would be shedding onto?
- Is this a budget decision this year, or a keep-it-forever decision?
Five answers and we can usually tell you which way to go in one phone call, at no cost and with no obligation.
Want it priced both ways?
We will quote asphalt and standing seam on the same roof so you can compare real numbers for your house rather than ranges from the internet.