Oh! Hail!

About five weeks ago Mark and I were looking out our back window, watching the birds. 

We noticed the wind starting to pick up from the north and the sky getting darker.

The wind picked up some more, and soon an amazing amount of junk was blowing out of the trees. Ball moss, dead branches, leaves, etc. About that time little pea size hail started falling.  Then marble size hail.  Then, before we knew it we had 2” hail coming down - sideways! 

Not a very good picture through the wet window.

The little white dots are the first hail stones.

The storm only lasted about 10 minutes.  We went outside to look around.  The car was in the garage so it was okay.  The truck and travel trailer were parked beside a storage shed and since the hail was coming sideways - the shed had protected both the truck and trailer.

We looked around the yard but didn’t find any shingles or other obvious indication of damage. 

The next day we came home from lunch to find a couple of brochures on our door from roofing companies.  We had noticed signs popping up all over the neighborhood advertising different roofing companies.  We ignored them since our roof looked okay from the ground.

The following day Excel Roofing came back while we were home.  They offered to go up on the roof and look for damage. Sure enough, the guy came back down with pictures on his cell phone of damage.  Mark told him we would call our insurance company and get an adjuster out.

A couple of days later our insurance adjuster came out.  Yep, we needed a new roof. The existing roof was only 5 years old but the 2” hail had beat it up a bit. 

We thoroughly checked out Excel Roofing and found that they are a top-notch company.

Mark had been interested in getting a metal roof put on the house and this seemed like a good time to look into it.

BAD news -- GOOD news -- BAD news

Bad news - metal roofs costs twice as much as shingles.

Good news - metal roofs are superior to shingles and your insurance goes down (in our case only about $40 a year).

Bad news - metal roofs are superior and the value of your house goes up - and so do your taxes, probably more than $40 a year!

Sooooo - we went with a metal roof.

The metal roofing material had to be ordered but, surprisingly, it only took about four weeks to arrive.  We got a starting date and were told it should take two days.  The first day they would completely tear off the old roof and start putting on the metal roof.  The second day they hoped to finish.

We were told the workers would show up between 7 and 8 am.  Imagine our surprise when our house lit up at 6 am when the first worker arrived (in the dark).

The rest of the crew showed up on time. 

They went right to work.

With eight guys working, the shingle roof came off fairly quickly.

Next came two layers of tar paper. 

The decking was cleaned off and it was lunch time. 

The metal roofing and the second crew had arrived about 10 am.  While the first crew was finishing tearing off, the second crew started laying down the synthetic underlayment, which is much improved over the old-style tar paper. 

We had a little factory tour going on in the front yard - much like when we had the gutters put on.

These are the giant coils of roofing.

I don’t know how much each coil weighs but they needed a crane to hoist them up.

The coil is started at one end.

Crimping takes place inside the machine: 

Out comes the completed, cut to order, panel:

And, off they go:

The panels are cut on the machine to any length needed, so there is a seamless piece of metal from the top to the gutter: 

As usual (at least for us), things didn’t go exactly as planned.  By the end of the second day it was obvious that the roof wasn’t going to be finished.  We were told it would be finished by 3 pm the next day (Saturday).

They pre-cut the remaining panels and the metal truck and workers left for the day.

On Saturday things were going along pretty well until they found that one of the metal panels wasn’t the correct length.  Since the metal truck was gone, the roof wasn’t going to be completed today.  The workers worked until 6:30 that evening putting on all the ridge caps that they could and getting everything buttoned up for the storm that was coming.  Luckily, we didn’t get any of the predicted hail and heavy rain.

Our roof relies on soffit vents and ridge vents to ventilate the attic, and Mark realized that the ridge pieces weren't vented well at all. He called the owner who said that he'd have them changed out to vented caps. 

Unfortunately the vented caps had to be fabricated and weren't ready on Monday but work resumed on Tuesday.

When we came back from lunch the roof was completed and all the workers had left. 

The new roof looks great and has the highest hail rating that you can get for a residential home. Hopefully it will be the last roof that we ever have to deal with!