On Tuesday we have finally started replacing a metal roof on the IHOP restaurant in Brighton, MA – near the Harvard stadium. This will be a big project, involving replacement of all the plywood and fixing rotted wood where necessary.

Since Tuesday night, it’s been raining non stop for 3 days, yet, we had enough time to tear off the old aluminum shakes on the section you can see in the picture, replace 3 sheets of plywood decking and make the roof watertight.

Why we replace a metal roof?

Although a metal roof (especially aluminum) should last a life-time, sometimes it does not. A roof is only as good as its installers. In this case , as well as with the IHOP metal roof in Hyannis MA,  which we installed in the beginning of the year, there we numerous installation defects. Namely, each shake was attached to the roof deck with only 3 clips and nails. While it is enough for the Brighton IHOP, since each shake is 3 sq. ft., in Hyannis, with all its high winds, shakes that were 5 sq. ft. were still attached with only 3 nails.

Another problem in case of Brighton IHOP roof, shake which apparently were manufactured by Alcoa, have very small locks – 3/8 of an inch, where as the best metal roofing systems (which we install) feature 3/4 inch locks, making them a much more durable and wind resistant metal roofing system.

Third, and this is more of a guess: the flat roof portion of the IHOP roof in Brighton was recently replaced. We found, that most of the plywood decking underneath the metal shakes was wet, soft and in some places rotted. Our conclusion is that the old flat roof was leaking, which caused some of the water to go under the metal shakes, and caused the rotted deck.

Our choice of metal roofing:

The two metal roofing shake above demonstrate a clear difference of quality design vs. the manufacturer trying to save pennies on reducing the size of the lock, which greatly reduces the integrity of the whole roof system. Honestly, we do now know why the aluminum shake on the left has such a narrow lock, but from our experience, we know that it can pose future problems such as blow-offs of the entire roof.

We will post more reports and pictures as the installation is coming along.

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Category: Metal Roofing Comment (0)December 12th, 2008