From midtown ranch houses to the newer stucco on the edges. Installation, replacement and repair on metal roofs, by a crew that does nothing else.
01Tucson, AZ
Tucson is not one kind of house, and the roofing problems track the age of the neighbourhood closely.
Sam Hughes, Blenman Elm and West University are largely 1920s to 1940s brick and adobe bungalows, with low pitched gables and deep eaves built to throw shade before anyone had air conditioning. They are lovely and they are awkward to roof, because the eaves are generous, the details are original, and there is often no attic worth the name to inspect from.
The midtown grid between Broadway and Speedway is where most of our calls come from. Dense 1950s and 1960s red brick ranch, long low slope planes, wide fascia runs, carports, and in a lot of cases a swamp cooler sitting on the roof with a curb around it that has been leaking quietly for a decade. Low slope is the operative detail. Below a certain pitch a lapped exposed fastener panel is simply the wrong system, and a good number of those roofs have one anyway.
Out on the southeast and northwest edges the stock turns to 1990s and 2000s stucco with concrete tile, and those calls are usually somebody who has decided they are finished with tile and wants to know what metal costs.
What all of it shares is the sun. The valley floor sits at around two thousand four hundred feet and takes roughly three hundred and fifty days of it a year. That is what sets the clock on every roof in this city, and it is why an asphalt roof here so often looks finished well before the number on the packet said it would.
02Services here
03Local conditions
A great many midtown roofs have very little pitch to work with. That single measurement rules some panel systems out entirely, and getting it wrong is the most common reason a metal roof in this city leaks at the laps.
Swamp coolers, condensers and the curbs around them are the most reliable leak source on an older Tucson house. Any roofer who does not look hard at those has not looked at your roof.
West and southwest facing planes take a beating that north facing planes do not, and they age visibly faster. We specify and inspect accordingly rather than treating the roof as one uniform surface.
The daily temperature swing here means the panels are never still. Systems that allow that movement last. Systems that fight it work their fasteners loose and tell you about it in a storm.
Next step
We will get on the roof, tell you what it actually needs, and put a written number on paper. If it does not need work yet, that is what the estimate will say.
04Questions
On a Tucson house with real pitch, a light coloured metal roof is very hard to beat for how long it lasts and how much heat it rejects. On a genuinely flat roof, foam or a membrane system is usually the better answer, and we will tell you that even though we do not install them.
It is driven by size, pitch, how many layers come off, access, the number of penetrations and which panel system you choose. Two houses of identical square footage in the same midtown block can differ substantially. We measure and put a written number on it.
Generally the middle of June through the end of September, with the storms arriving in earnest from early July and the heaviest activity across July and August. The useful thing to do with that is have the roof looked at in May or June, before it gets tested rather than after.
No, a light coloured metal roof usually runs cooler than the asphalt roof it replaced. Metal feels hot when you touch it because it conducts heat quickly, which is a different thing from pushing heat into your house. What matters is how much sun the surface reflects and whether the space underneath is vented and insulated properly.
05Nearby
Oro Valley up under the Catalinas, Marana out along the corridor, and Vail to the southeast. We also work the Catalina Foothills, Sahuarita, Green Valley, Corona de Tucson, Catalina and Rita Ranch.
06Get started
Tell us what the roof is doing. We will get on it, look properly, and put the answer in writing. If it does not need work yet, that is what the estimate will say.
Or call(520) 555-0100Mon to Fri, 6am to 3pm. Early hours are not a typo. Summer roofing here starts at first light and comes off the roof around midday.