Metal Roof Seaming Best Practices in Lansing

Have you thought about the potential benefits of investing in a new metal roof for your Lansing home? Metal roofs offer distinct advantages over traditional asphalt shingle roofs and can provide Lansing area homeowners with lasting value in many ways. Metal roofing uses a unique installation process called seaming, and it’s essential to work with a roofer that has experience with metal roof seaming for your type of home. If you want to upgrade your home with a new metal roof in the near future, the following best practices can help you ensure you get the most value for your money.

Hire the Right Installation Crew

Before hiring any roofer or contractor to work on your home, take time to thoroughly research your options and check potential roofers’ credentials. Make sure they have the appropriate licenses and credentials to safely perform the work you need. Check online reviews to see what customers think of their past work. You can also ask friends, family, and coworkers about the good experiences they have had with local roofers to find the right installation crew for your metal roof seaming project.

Professional metal roof installation crews are familiar with the leading brands of metal roofing materials and can help clients choose the best metal roof configurations for their home styles and budgets. Trusting an unlicensed contractor could lead to shoddy work that is more expensive to repair in the future.

Make Sure That Crew Has Proper Equipment

The metal roof seaming crew you hire should come prepared for the job on time and ready to complete the work in a professional manner. Every type of roof panel requires different equipment for crimping the seams into place correctly. Most metal roofing panel manufacturers rent or lease this equipment out to roofing companies, so make sure the Lansing roofer you hire to handle your metal roof seaming has the appropriate tools for the products you purchase.

Using the wrong tools on metal roof panels can effectively destroy the panels, slowing down the project and leading to additional cost and frustration. Check to see which brands of metal roofing products a roofer uses and then check to make sure the roofer has the manufacturer’s designated equipment.

Understand the Importance of Hand Crimping

When your metal roof seaming team starts laying the panels for your roof, the panels will hold in place using metal clips. Depending on the engineering of the products, different panels have different spacing requirements for these clips. Hand crimping is essential for forming the seams around these clips and the ends of each panel. Your metal roof seaming team should understand how to perform hand crimping properly; overlooking the hand crimping phase is one of the leading causes of faulty seaming.

Recognize How the Electric Seamer Will Be Used

The electric seamer tool will finish up the metal roof installation process. After placing the panels, spacing the clips, and hand crimping, the electric seamer finishes the metal roof system. Your seaming team should work carefully as a team to ensure nothing is in the path of the seamer for every seam. While it fine to stop and restart the electric seamer if necessary, your seaming team should now move and replace the seamer because it will be extremely hard to get it back into the exact right position again, potentially leaving a hole in the seam that could eventually compromise the entire roof system.

Electric seamers are powerful tools that require dedicated power sources. Your roofing team should not attempt to simply plug it into an exterior outlet on your home and expect it to work. An electric seamer needs about 15 amps and 120 volts of power from a dedicated circuit. Most professional roofers will carry their own AC/DC motors specifically for electric seamers.

Ensure Safety Is a Priority During the Process

Electrical seamers are heavy and potentially dangerous tools. Your metal roof seaming team should have a safety line attached to the device for the entire duration of the seaming finishing phase. Every member of the team should also use personal safety equipment such as hard hats, heavy-duty gloves, and fall protection gear with safety lines.

Check with a potential roofing company about their safety policies, what type of safety training their team members complete, and what type of insurance coverage they carry to protect their workers. Any trustworthy roofer should be happy to share this information to secure your business, so avoid any roofers that refuse to answer questions about employee safety training or their company safety policies.

Removal of the Old Asphalt Roof Before Installation

In some parts of the country, it’s standard practice for metal roof installation teams to simply install new metal roofs over old asphalt shingle roofs. You should check to make sure your metal roof seaming team plans to remove the old asphalt shingles before installing the new metal roof. Failure to remove the old asphalt shingles can cause a “telegraphing” effect when pressure from snow, which creates the appearance of the old shingles pressing against the underside of the metal panels in a horizontal striping pattern.

Standing seam metal roofs also need room to expand and contract with changing weather. If the old roofing material remains underneath the new metal panels, this can cause the rough surface of the asphalt shingles to scratch against the metal panels, destroying the paint and the galvanized layer protecting the panel and creating rust.

Your metal roof seaming team should clean away the old roofing material and ensure the roof deck is completely clean before installing the sheathing and underlayment for your new metal roof. This sheathing not only helps limit inside noise from rain but also helps with insulation and heat distribution, helping Lansing homes with metal roofs maintain optimal energy efficiency.

Conclusion

A standing seam metal roof can be a beautiful, modern addition to any Lansing home, but it is essential for Lansing homeowners to only work with experienced, trustworthy roofers and contractors who know their materials, their equipment, and their safety practices inside and out. Some standing seam metal roof installation jobs can be very complicated, especially for homes with lots of different roof angles and vaultings, but a reliable metal roof seaming team will be able to walk you through every step of the process and inspire confidence in their work.