Comparing Roofing Materials | Ask This Old House

[Music] tommy we're talking roofing materials today and you have installed your share of roofs over the years far too many to countdown and most of them were probably with asphalt shingles the most common roofing material most common roof material and actually three tab asphalt shingles were very common and now they have what is called architectural shingles which instead of having three individual tabs you now have a shingle that's built up without any slots and they also have these in different thicknesses or different grades and so this is a cost-effective roof which is one of the reasons why it's most popular you can get what in terms of lifespan out of it 10 years 15 years you can get 20 years 15 20 years easily some of them saying 25 on the basic shingle right and then you can upgrade to a higher grade shingle and buy a longer warranty up to 50 years again that's the thickness of the shingle so it's going to cost more money for the shingle it's going to cost a little more money for labor because it's a heavier material all right the other type of shingle roof that we see a lot around here in new england is a wooden shingle cedar is a common material it's been used for many many years and when done correct you can get a lot of life out of it a wood roof basically is installed it has to get wet when it gets wet it swells and that's what makes it watertight but first the shingle has to get wet right but it also has to dry out otherwise we're going to get rot we're going to get mold mildew and that drying process is critical for the installation very critical that's why the old yankees would put it on what is called skip sheathing where there were wide gaps between the boards to get plenty of air underneath it but today they're not doing skip sheathing you're doing plywood the shingles can't lay on the plywood they can't lay on the felt paper so now they have they have venting materials that come in rolls and basically lifts the shingles off of the substrate allowing them to dry underneath in terms of costs you could be paying twice or more for a wood roof than asphalt right i would say most cases a lot more more than double and then in terms of lifespan how long can you get out of a good way when done right and depending on the location of the roof trees no trees high wind area you could get you could get 50 years out of it nice that's cool um metal roofs is another material one of my favorites um it's kind of bulletproof i mean it is just this one big long continuous sheet of metal well i mean it's actually got seams but everything's connected the seams are running up the roof vertically as opposed to horizontally which is great because if the wind starts blowing you know even a well installed asphalt or wooden shingle you still have the opportunity for wind to drive water up underneath with a metal roof it's just continuous all the way it's continuous all the way less chance of that roof leaking under windy conditions and any conditions in new england we get a lot of snow so the snow can slide right off the roof in some cases you have to bake barriers to stop it from sliding in entry weights because you don't want to get hit with it and several different choices of material as well steel to galvanized to galvalume to copper lead-coated copper it can go on and on way more expensive than an asphalt roof depending on the material it could be five times more and in terms of durability though we can get you can get 100 years out of it that's nice yeah and then the other type of roof to talk about are tile roofs clay tiles or up here we see a lot of slate roofs they look beautiful right that's a beautiful roof and it will last a long time the problem is is you have to you have to build for the added weight of that roof those are heavy materials right so if you have a shallow shallow roof as opposed to a steep pitch roof the structure has to be different to accommodate that weight got you all right well good overview tommy thank you very much my pleasure thanks for watching this whole house has got a video for just about every home improvement project so be sure to check out the others and if you like what you see click on the subscribe button to make sure that you get our newest videos right in your feed

Channel: This Old House

Views: 184,371

Keywords: This Old House, Ask This Old House, DIY, Home Improvement, DIY Ideas, Renovation, Renovation Ideas, How To Fix, How To Install, How To Build, tom silva, kevin o'connor, roofing, 1-3 minutes, roofing materials, roofing shingles installation, roofing shingles, shingle roof installation, roofing types, metal roofing installation, metal roof over shingles, clay tile roof installation, clay roof tiles, how to roof a house with shingles

Id: l1zNXQDePPE

Length: 3min 50sec (230 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 08 2019