Roof Metal

On Thursday, March 6, we started putting the metal on the roof. Again, my dad helped. Without his assistance, I would've been hard put to get the job done. We had a nice, warm day with no wind (handling pieces of roofing metal on top of a house when it's windy isn't a very good idea).

We started on the front roof. Based upon our measurements, the roof was square, meaning if we started out with the first piece lined up correctly, we ought to finish in the correct location also. All in all, it came out pretty well.

The metal I'm using is some that I bought for nearly half the regular price because it's "rainbow." As I understand it, these are the sheets upon which the factory cleans out the paint nozzles, making them different shades and colors. Most of mine are some shade of green. Part of the deal is that the sheets I bought were in ten foot lengths, rather than them being cut to the length of my roof. I wasn't concerned about having a seem on my roof, and the color won't matter once I have the roof coated as planned.

I bought 15 sheets of 11' long "rainbow" metal two weeks ago, because I needed a little more length for the front. I also needed more metal than I originally purchased for roofing the porch along the back of the house which wasn't in our original plans. We started by putting the 11' sheets on the lower edge of the roof on the front. I left a four inch overhang for the porch roof to slide under later.

Above the 11' sheets we put down a row of 10' sheets. These overlap the lower row by nearly eight inches. I also added a bead of silicone caulk on each seem and overlap. I don't want water to find its way through, over, or under the metal. The two sets of metal apparently came from different factories, because, although they are all "classic rib" design, there were some slight variations between the two lots. Not enough variation to matter, though, just how the ribs fitted over or under one another. With the overlap and caulk, there isn't any problem.



I took pictures when we came back to work after lunch. We had almost finished the front at that point in time. We were able to finish the front and put nine ten foot pieces on the back before the day was over. To install the last two pieces on the front, we tied a ladder onto the strapping on the back so that I wouldn't slip off while screwing them on. Working on the back was much easier and quicker than the front because of the roof pitch.











It rained on Friday and then snowed on Saturday. It cleared up on Sunday, but it took all day to melt the snow off of the roof. So, dad and I had to wait until Monday to finish putting the metal on. We had to cut seven sheets in half for the back for the top row (the back is almost 15'). There's only two inches of overlap between the rows of metal, but we caulked them well. So, it should be a sufficient overlap.

We finished the back, flashed around the base of the cupola, and installed the ridge cap before we quit. We did get a little wet because it sprinkled for a while before we were finished. The pieces of ridge cap that I bought are different colors because they were cover sheets for other orders. But, at $2.00 each instead of $10.00 each, I wasn't going to complain, especially since they'll be painted white later anyway. So, my current ridge cap has two colors: red and black.