- Today on Q & A Mondays,
we're talking about common things
to know about roof drainage components.
- Do it again, I was looking around, sorry.
(group laughs)
This is a constant problem with me.
(lively electric guitar music)
- Welcome back to Q&A Mondays everyone.
I'm Thad Barnette from Sheffield Metals.
Today we're talking about common things
to know about roof drainage components.
Check out the description, there will be links
to all the questions we talk about today
so check that out for sure.
Today I've got John-Michael Teal
from Roof Drainage Components and
Adam Mazzella back from Sheffield Metals,
so thanks for being with me today guys,
we are here from Metalcon in Charlotte, North Carolina,
so it's really great to be here.
First, we're gonna talk about the difference
between architecturally specified roof drainage components
and non-specified,
so can you tell me a little bit about what that means
and what the difference is? - Yeah, sure.
More and more architects are starting
to actually specify gutter and downspouts in their specs.
Usually, what you're seeing now is
there's gonna be a paint finish warranty
of some sort, a 20, 30, 40 year paint finish warranty,
and they want all of the gutter and downspouts manufactured
in the same material as either the roof panels,
wall panels, edge metal, something like that.
That would be one major thing is the finish
and the paint warranty being the exact same
as that of the roof and the panels.
- Okay.
- In non-specified products,
people usually end up getting a polyester,
pre-baked enamel type, non-Kynar, SMP, something finish
for their product, which doesn't have the same warranty.
That would be one big difference.
The other one is, architects are starting to specify larger
and thicker materials.
.050, .040, and aluminum is, you're seeing that a lot more.
22 gauge in steel,
and those products are very hard to run
in gutter and downspout, especially, the half-round
and round stuff which is probably one
of the biggest growing profiles in the architectural market
when it comes to gutter and downspout.
That happens to be something Roof Drainage Components
has been able to do is the half-round stuff
and really thick metals because we're geared toward
that architectural market.
Those would be the two, I think,
main things right now is half-round and round,
very thick materials in steel and aluminum
and also the paint finish matching
that of the roof and the edge metal, et cetera.
- So what happens when an architect
doesn't specify drainage component?
- Usually people focus more
on the roof panels and wall panels and then when the gutter
and downspout come around,
and either the roofing contractor is the one
who's gonna be supplying those.
They'll go to their distributor, manufacturer, whoever,
and you might get a similar color to the gutter
and downspout that isn't matching the rest of the metal
on the building. - Oh yeah.
- It also can be a lesser quality product.
It's gonna be thinner usually,
and the paint doesn't typically have the Kynar paint finish,
is not what they go with because it's more expensive.
So they usually just go for the budget option,
which is cheaper and lower quality.
- Okay.
- Well, and from what we see in our perspective,
it's not so much the cheaper thing like that,
it's just that path of least resistance.
- Yes.
The architect has a look he has in mind,
he wants a half-round.
What's available, generally, is that,
- Yeah. - and that's a big reason
for our partnership is your guys' ability to match
that with our metal roofing system,
- Yeah.
- as well as manufacture a high-end,
more rigid type system at a variety of sizes
- Yeah. - and finishes,
and substrates.
- Yeah. - Yeah.
- And that's a good point,
so how do you work with metal manufacturers,
roof manufacturers, what is that relationship kind of like?
- Yeah, in this case, this should be,
Sheffield's a good example,
when contractors or companies have Sheffield's roof panels
on their building and they need gutter and downspout
to match those roof panels, typically,
they might call Sheffield and ask,
"Hey, can you get us half-round gutter
and round downspout in the same color, et cetera?"
Let's say Roof Drainage doesn't exist,
they'd have a hard time finding that,
but now we buy from Sheffield,
we buy directly from them
and we can get your flat sheets and coils.
If they're running a seamless gutter on the job site,
we can send coil, gutter accessories,
and all the downspout, and all of Sheffield's material.
- So you manufacture the components
from Sheffield's materials? - Yeah.
- And just to be clear, one of the things
we liked about our partnership was they work
with all different metal roof manufacturers,
and a lot of Sheffield Metal's competitors
and that's good because I think
that advances the metal roofing
and architectural metals world.
With their capabilities, people aren't just stuck
with one metal, or one finish,
they do a variety of stuff and they do it at a high level.
- Yeah. - Yeah.
- It really is a true partnership, working back and forth,
it's not just purchasing or supplying,
- Yeah. - Yeah.
- it's a true partnership.
- And just to touch on what he said a second ago,
a lot of people think that when we say, we can do this
in Sheffield medium bronze, they think
that it's just a color that is a match.
- Right.
- But we actually buy that, and
that's pretty key component
as well, yeah. - For sure.
- Why is having a sole source
of roof drainage components beneficial?
- Yeah, I think it goes back to,
sort of like you were saying a second ago,
path of least resistance, ease of ordering, peace of mind.
When you're doing these projects,
gutter and downspout is typically
the more tedious/annoying part of the building.
It's at the very end, it's the last product that goes on.
It's very hard to estimate and do a takeoff on
because a lot of things have to be field verified.
- Yeah.
- And it just gets pushed and pushed and pushed, typically.
And then it's usually a fire drill, at the very end,
of a project to get it all together.
What we do, that's all we focus on,
so it's not a side sort of last minute thing for us,
it's our main thing.
Being able to order everything related to gutter
and downspout from one place that doesn't have any sort
of location barriers is super helpful.
We ship everywhere in the country.
We ship internationally.
Even people that run, like I said earlier,
seamless gutter on a job site,
we can still supply the coil and accessories,
and anything else they need, all in one.
- Yeah.
- I would say that is probably
the main pro to that, - Yeah.
- having that go-to source.
- And that's really been one of the big benefits, is
they can specialize in manufacturing things
that are very custom.
So, if an end-user picks a particular gutter,
that their contractor can manufacture,
but wants a really high-end or special downspout
that can't be found elsewhere.
One of the things that really impressed me
was you guys can do a half-round, with a Pittsburgh seam
in an .040, maybe even an O.
- Oh yeah, .063.
- .063 and that might not mean anything to you,
but I was blown away by seeing somebody
that can do a round downspout, .063,
- Yeah. - Pittsburgh seam,
the variety of sizes they can do with a half-round gutter.
The possibilities really are endless,
whether you are going high-end commercial,
or really high-end ornamental,
- [Thad] Yeah.
- whether it's copper, zinc, painted finishes.
- So it does include specialty metals
and upper-end premium metals. - [Adam] Oh, yeah.
- Absolutely. Yup.
We do stainless steel, we do .304 to .316, polish.
Usually, when people ask what we can do,
I usually ask them what they need.
If we haven't done it before, then we're gonna try it too.
- Yeah.
There's a lot there, for sure.
- Yeah.
- In your experience, what are some common mistakes
that you kind of see through the whole process,
from estimating all the way to installing?
- So the first thing would be estimating gutter
and downspout and all the accessories is tedious
because a lot of things have to be field verified
so you can estimate the edge metal
or the roof panels pretty well from a plan drawing
or something like that, and get a good quantity.
For gutter and downspout,
a lot of things come into play
when the building is actually built
that you can't account for in a takeoff,
so what we see a lot of is the accessory items,
like elbows and offsets, even hanger spacing is usually
- Yeah. - way off in
the estimating side of things.
When things are quoted and you get a bid,
or you win the job, you might find
that either you've shorted yourself
or you haven't factored in enough for your budget.
But then, it kind of carries all the way through
because if you, on the order side of gutter
and downspout products, you always need to factor
in more of a margin of error in your quantities
than you would for other products on the building.
Mainly because there are so many unknowns with gutter
and downspout, and they're not really a flexible product.
I'll just give you some real examples with elbows.
A lot of people don't factor in the eave distance
so when you go down from the gutter and in towards the wall,
sometimes you need two elbows and sometimes
you need two elbows and a piece
of downspout in between them,
- Yeah.
- but we offer a one piece offset
that can kind of handle that in one component.
Things like that, or ledges on a building,
or a internal drainage system
that's a foot away from the building.
Things like that, that are small and tedious,
but you can't really get around them,
unless you order either extra components
or factor in a high margin of error
- Yeah.
- on your quantities,
when you're doing takeoffs.
A lot of times, we get people
in a fire drill ordering just a couple
of pieces at a time because
they hadn't factored those in on the front end.
And I guess the last common one would be gutter
and downspout, is usually kind of
the forgotten product when it comes to budgeting
for the project because it's last minute
and it's pretty tedious, like I said earlier.
So, people don't factor in,
if you're budgeting .050 gutter and downspout,
that's an expensive product and you have
to actually go quote that
and you can't just kind of use random numbers to price it.
- Okay.
- We've seen that kind of cause issues
before as well. - Right.
- For information on how to access Roof Drainage Components
in Sheffield Metal's colors, you can check out a link below.
That's a page on our website,
and you also find takeoff sheets on there,
that are pretty intuitive and self-explanatory
on how to get a quote and how to request the specific items
you need that we covered in this video.
- Well, thanks for joining us,
I think we talked about a lot of good information,
and again, check out that link
in the description for more information.
Comment below with any questions if you have,
and we'd love to continue answering them
and any further information on this topic as well.
Subscribe to the metal roofing channel,
and we'll catch you next time.
(lively electric guitar music)