- So you think you have problems
with your metal roof installation?
Well, today we're gonna give you options
on ways that you might be able to resolve those.
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Welcome to The Metal Roofing Channel.
Today, we're gonna be talking about if you're a homeowner
or a building owner and you have issues with your roof,
they might be aesthetics, you might have a leak.
We're gonna discuss those topics
and the different options you have
as far as getting 'em corrected.
I'm Jeff Hock, technical director for Sheffield Metals.
- Dave Stubbs, assistant technical director
for Sheffield Metals.
- [Jeff] First topic we're gonna talk about
is if you have problems during your installation.
So what are some of those things
that could happen during your installation?
- Well, definitely, a leak is obviously a problem,
but that can happen during the installation or post-install.
You might notice a leak inside the house,
obvious, a major problem.
- If it's during the installation
and say you notice a leak somewhere
that the roof hasn't been installed yet,
probably an easy fix.
It's a dry in problem.
- Yeah, definitely.
I mean, that's an easy fix.
But post-install, most times it's valley conditions,
penetrations. - Panels.
- Penetrations.
Generally, panels don't leak.
It's generally the trim, whether it be a transition, a hip.
Definitely, a valley condition
is probably the most predominant area in which leaks happen.
- So if it's during the installation,
obviously that's something that you wanna bring up
to the contractor right away.
But let's talk about just bringing it up to the contractor.
99% of the time, the person you make a deal with
and you sign a contract with
isn't the guy up on your roof installing it.
It's important to have a point of contact
throughout the installation process,
that if you have issues, you know who to call
and they're gonna be there to address your issue.
- Absolutely.
You're paying the money
for what you have expectations for,
and one of 'em is for it not to leak.
- But at the same time, let's face it too,
if a homeowner or building owner goes up
and tells a construction crew to stop working,
more than likely, that might cause
some more problems than not.
- [Dave] Yeah, absolutely.
- Because the direction to the roofing crew
needs to come from their boss.
So that's why it's important to have your point of contact
and know who to contact.
So that's first and foremost,
and that's if it's concerning a leak.
So another problem you might see on your roof
that you think is a problem is they're installing things
a way that you haven't seen before
that you haven't researched.
Could it be an issue?
You know what?
It absolutely could be an issue.
Are manufacturer details
the only way something can be installed?
No, I mean, there's a ton of different ways
that things get installed all day, every day
throughout the country.
It doesn't mean that if something is necessarily different
that it's bad.
Yeah, a lot of manufacturers
have very, very similar details.
There's an old way
that prescribes to a certain way to install.
There's new, more functional ways to do it.
Neither is necessarily wrong,
but it's more about the functionality
and not having the roof leak.
- Right, and manufacturer details,
at least in our situation, we had to create a set of details
that could be used all over the country,
from high velocity hurricane zones in South Florida
to snow country in Montana where it's freezing
seven months out of the year.
- Yeah, 10 feet of snow on the roof.
- Right, so we gotta have details
that can be applicable to all those situations.
So a contractor might have details that they use
that aren't necessarily manufacturer's details,
but that doesn't necessarily mean they're wrong.
I think the first thing I would do
if I saw a contractor installing something
that I wasn't familiar with,
I'd call my point of contact again and ask him.
I'd be like, "Listen.
How is this being installed, and can you explain it to me
how this keeps water outta my system?"
or "how my roof is still gonna be able
to expand and contract," whatever your concerns are
as far as functionality.
- But then start getting into aesthetics.
- Aesthetics are a completely different story.
- Absolutely.
There's a whole different spectrum of things aesthetically
that could be wrong, or maybe just
not aesthetically pleasing.
- There's installation details out there
that are just flat out ugly, but they don't leak.
- Correct.
- Hopefully, these are all things
you talked about with your contractor
before you started having any installation done
and you can refer to them if there was a problem,
say, "Hey, I thought we were gonna install it X, Y, Z.
They're installing it A, B, and C."
- Definitely encourage the perpetuating conversation
from the beginning to the end.
But having that conversation upfront
and setting expectations upfront is key
to getting what you want and what you need
for that roof that you've invested in
that should potentially last for 50 years.
- So I guess the main point of it is,
is if you see something that you have a problem with,
get in touch with your point of contact,
have them address it as fast as they can
so if that detail is still being continued to be installed
or that problem you think is gonna keep happening
as the guys keep installing the roof,
you can get it corrected or at least explain to you
to where you're comfortable before they get done
putting the rest of your roof on.
So what happens if you find a problem
after the installation?
It's different answers depending on how long it's been
after the installation, right?
- And what that problem is.
- Right. - Right, I mean,
if it's a leak, if you've got a leak a couple years after
that you didn't notice, or it wasn't a leak before,
something had to have changed
or something had to have decayed
or something must have had to have happened.
And so to dig in, I definitely would call a professional.
- Or if you have a workmanship warranty,
that's when you would call your contractor
and say, "Hey, I'm having a problem.
My workmanship warranty was for five years.
It's been two years since I had my roof installed."
That's the place you wanna start
'cause they're hopefully gonna honor your warranty
and come back and determine the cause.
They should understand the details that were used
because usually contractors don't switch details
between jobs. - Correct.
- They have a set of details they use
and they know how things go together.
- That's probably the most,
most cost-effective way to do it too.
You call somebody new onto a new job,
generally the meter starts running
as soon as you make the phone call.
- And 99% of the time, they don't want to go back
and do any work behind somebody else,
and if they do, you're probably not gonna get any guarantee
because now they're touching somebody else's problem.
- Right, so you'll probably end up losing that first section
of workmanship warranty on the roof that you had installed.
If it's not a leak but something aesthetic that you notice,
again, probably the same process.
Call the contractor, discuss it,
if this wasn't a detail that you agreed to.
Metal roofing is very hard to change after install.
It perpetuates a whole different conversation
when you start even trying to remove panels.
- Right.
- That's a tough one.
- If you got a problem with your ridge cap,
it's something that could probably be handled halfway easy.
You got a problem with the rake flashing,
if it's a box style rake,
probably something pretty easy that could be handled.
Eaves, panels, valleys, maybe sidewalls, head walls,
depending on how they're installed,
those are all gonna be a lot more difficult
and require a lot more labor.
- Unless you installed it, you really don't know
how that whole thing went into the assembly.
So that makes it difficult.
- But again, your first point of contact,
if it's been two days, 10 days, 30 days,
is gonna be your roofing installation contractor.
They're gonna be the ones that you wanna contact first
'cause they're gonna be the ones
that are gonna be most likely
to be able to help you in your situation.
We've talked about leaks.
We've talked about aesthetics.
Pretty much all of it has been contacting your contractor,
so let's talk about how to go about that,
what that might look like.
During or after the installation,
how you're received is really gonna depend
a lot on how you deliver the message that you have.
You probably just got done spending a bunch of money
or you're about to spend a bunch of money on a metal roof,
and if there's a problem,
you're probably not gonna be exactly happy about it.
The way you conduct yourselves really goes a long way
when you deal with installation contractors,
roofing companies, or quite honestly, anybody,
especially when you're trying to get something wrong.
So if Dave's my roofing contractor
and I'm like, "Yo, there's a problem, but it's your problem.
You need to fix it."
- Yeah, well, I mean the the conversation is perpetuated.
Instantly, I'm putting on my defense mechanism.
It doesn't have to be an irritant or a bad conversation.
It could be, "Hey, I need help on this.
My roof doesn't look like I think it should look,"
or something like that.
I always propose a phone call
and probably a follow up email with pictures attached.
Pictures are pretty easy to allocate
or get for the most part.
If you're seeing something,
you should be able to get pictures of it.
- But to the point we were talking about earlier
goes back to treat people how you wanna be treated,
and hopefully, you'll get that reciprocated back to you
and they'll be open into listening and hearing you out
as far as what your problem is.
And if it's a quality ribbon contractor,
they should probably do anything that they can
to help remedy the problem.
- [Dave] Totally agree.
- Say you've tried all those things,
you contacted the contractor,
you've wrote 'em, you sent pictures,
and you're not getting the response that you want
or you're not getting the remedy that you want.
So what can Sheffield do?
Or even if it's not Sheffield,
what can the manufacturer of that product do,
metal do to help you out?
The short answer is not a whole lot.
Companies like us that don't install panels,
we just distribute coil or we just manufacture panels.
When you're dealing with the installation contractor,
that is a completely different entity,
a completely different business.
While they might be our customer,
we don't dictate their business.
We can't tell them how to install things.
We can't make them use certain details.
- Can't tell them how to operate.
- Right.
- Can't make them answer phone calls.
We've all heard stories of, "My roof is messed up
and the contractor won't return a call."
That's very difficult for us
because homeowners, building owners bend our ear.
We've heard a lot of different conversations.
And it's difficult.
It's difficult on us and it's even harder
when we call the contractor to find out what's going on.
- It's a bad situation because we're kind of helpless
to do anything.
While we supply the material,
we don't have any control over their business
or how they decide to run it.
So that's another reason
dealing with the quality roofing contractor is so important.
If Sheffield can't help,
what are the options a homeowner has
if they have a bad installation
or if they can't come to an agreement with their contractor?
- Well, I think one of the big ones is
the contractor's probably gonna wanna draw out
the front end of it for the material.
- The deposit at least.
- Deposit at least.
To hold back payment
until you're satisfied with your project
is probably the best leverage
a homeowner, building owner has.
- [Jeff] Might be the only leverage.
- Correct.
- Now I will say, the caveat to that is,
if they've completed your roof
and you're holding back payment, being sued goes both ways.
- [Dave] Correct.
- A contractor can sue a homeowner for non-payment.
A homeowner can sue a contractor for insufficient jobs.
That is absolute last resort.
It's a road that a contractor's not gonna want to go down.
It's a road that a homeowner
hopefully won't have to go down.
Again, dealing with your contractor in a respectful way
is probably the number one thing you can do
to come to some resolution between you and the contractor.
It might be, if it's a problem with a detail
that they're concerned about leaking, it might be like,
"Well, instead of a five-year workmanship warranty,
we're gonna give you a 15-year workmanship warranty,"
to give you that peace of mind,
saying that we are comfortable as a contractor
in how we installed your roof.
If it's aesthetics,
it might be, "Hey, we'll fix X, Y, and Z,
but A and B aren't gonna happen without a complete re-roof
or a completely tearing things up
and that's gonna cost you extra money
if you want to do that route."
- There are options, but once again,
it's that communication factor.
Your expectations at the front end
need to match up what you get at the end.
And so that constant discussion,
that constant communication,
making sure you get what you want
as a building owner, homeowner, from your contractor.
- Bringing up your concerns as soon as they happen
and not waiting, I think can help remedy
a lot of those situations.
Thank you for watching.
Look forward to more videos on The Metal Roofing Channel
and we'll catch you next time.
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