Metal roof install tips and tricks -- dripline string guide

hello everybody so it's metal roofing time on the timber frame carport project and i wanted to make a quick video to talk about i think one of the most important things you can do to put up a nice straight metal roof and that is to install a string guide and as you can see that string runs all the way down the eve line or maybe you could call it the drip line and this is one of the best things i think you can do to get a high quality roof install so let me climb up on the ladder a little bit more and we'll talk about this in some detail okay so we're up here topside looking at the metal roof and this is the very first panel i installed and it surprisingly takes a lot of work and measurements and prep to get a get it built up to the point where you can do your first panel but here it is and from this view you can see my string line and um when people put on metal roofs i think one of the biggest challenges is keeping the panels straight and and starting from one end and coming out at the other end with your panels straight and the way you want them not getting them crooked not losing your spacing rhythm but just getting everything that come out correctly where a lot of people go wrong is they will line up their first panel with their gable and then they will try and line up every panel on the previous panel and work their way down the roof and if you're lucky that might just work out but when you do it that way you end up building up a little bit of error with each panel and by the time you get four or five panels down the roof you can be way the heck off and so that's a tough way to try and do things the way i like to look at these roofs is to think about what's going to be the most important line people will notice what's going to be the most difficult line to keep straight where you need to minimize error where you could run into problems because error has blown up and that that really where things go wrong is almost always along the drip line along the eave uh you might see some roofs where it's got a kind of a step step pattern at the edge where the panels don't quite line up might look like a saw blade um because people start by lining up at their gable and then they get part way down the roof and they realize hey i'm veering away off course i need to move some panels back up or back down and all of a sudden you get a stair pattern going down the edge and so one way to avoid all these problems is to set up a string guide down along your drip line and follow that religiously for every single panel and what i normally like to do is set up that string so it's about an eighth inch below where the panel needs to stop and then i just kind of eyeball that gap as i go down every new panel i put on i'll slide it down until it gives me about that eighth of an inch gap i know it's good then i screw it down and move on to the next panel um and uh i've been doing that for years it's always worked out great it's a just a i think a easy way to come out with a really nice straight roof along this edge where you're going to notice where everybody else is going to notice you get a nice straight even line no jagged edges and it just it just works out great now when you do this what you're kind of giving up is perfect alignment on your gable ends but it turns out that's not a big deal anyways because once i'm done putting up the panels i'm going to put a piece of trim over here called the denver gable trim and it actually comes up over and then down the side of my fascia and that's going to basically form my gable detail if for any reason i was crooked with that panel on the gable uh all that's going to be hidden under that denver gable trim and so this is the place where you want to allow errors this is the place where you want to allow things to be a little bit crooked um because you're going to hide that stuff no one will ever see it you'll never know and you know maybe if your building was perfect everything would come out perfect but chances are it's going to be a little bit off this is the place where you want to hide those errors under that uh denver gable trim so that's the main thing i wanted to talk about um in in this case you can see this how i'm holding the string here i just got a little piece of wood with a nail and it's spaced out from my gable fascia board by the amount i know it needs to be and i just screw that to the fascia and it sticks out here's an example one i've made for a previous project where things were a little more complicated i forget what about this was more complicated but i actually had to reach out and up with the string and you can see i'd put little saw grooves on that block of wood to hold the string where i wanted to but that's another example of how you can set up a string guide to hold your uh the string run down the drip line and you know these are always going to be a little bit custom and specific to the job but it's just a couple pieces of scrap wood and some screws and it's just super easy and quick to set these up so i highly recommend using this method the last thing i wanted to talk about here are your screws one of the most common failures with a roof is people who overdrive those screws and i think a lot of people love driving those screws in until they see that rubber gasket squish out that's a mistake that's the wrong way to do it because what that does is it exposes that rubber gasket to sunlight and the elements and it's going to deteriorate a whole lot quicker so when you put these screws in what you want to do is just watch carefully and uh with my eyesight i have to kind of peek over my glasses to see this but you'll see that rubber washer just kind of begin to plump up a little bit as it gets squished squeezed down that's when you want to stop that means you've made contact you've sealed up around that hole but you haven't gone so far as to you know push that that rubber gasket out from under the screw so just remember that when you're driving these in don't over drive them just bring them in enough to plump up that gasket and then you're done and then the last thing i like to remember to do is to pre-apply my butyl tape um on a panel so that when i come up with the next panel what i'll do is i'll line that up line it up with my string it'll be laying over the top of this ridge here so that helps me also you know kind of lock in with this previous panel and when i'm happy with the fit i'll put a couple screws in the bottom to hold it in place then i'll kind of lift the edge back up reach on there peel this protective strip off all the way up the panel and then lay the new panel down and as i'm walking up the roof to screw it in i'll you know press down and and try and seal that that tape and the butyl tape um this you know this is considered optional in a lot of cases really what this is going to do it's going to stop wind and wind-driven rain from working under this seam and the roof so i feel like it's important these this is actually very inexpensive it's about five bucks a roll for i think 50 feet and uh this is just a good good thing to do to you know ensure the weather tightness of the roof so that's it for today i got this first panel up this was kind of my test panel uh making sure everything fits i like to pre-drill my holes that way when i'm up on this roof and this is a 712 roof i don't want to be playing games getting screws started on the roof like this because it'd be really easy to lose your balance and slip slip and slide right off so i like to pre-drill all the screw holes in my panel that takes a little bit of planning ahead of time but i work that out with this first panel when i go to start the next batch of panels what i'll do is probably stack up well i don't know six or eight of those panels uh get them all lined up and drill the whole group of them at once uh use a one one eighth inch hardened erwin drill bit they seem to make a pretty good bit that lasts a while but when you do pre-drill your panels it's a good idea to have a pack of those bits with you because you probably will break them uh every once in a while when you're you know stacking them up and drilling them all at once but i just really like i like the idea of pre-drilling you know you you know exactly where the screw has to go because you can see the hole the screw starts real easy no no playing games up on a steep roof and i think it's just a good way to go so that's it for today there's our drip line string key concept to remember good way to install a high quality roof thanks for watching

Channel: Lumber Jack

Views: 16,476

Rating: 4.8277512 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: aSJZDHBLMBM

Length: 10min 20sec (620 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 04 2021