What installation day looks like, honestly

Most of the questions I get once someone has decided on metal are not about metal at all. People have already read the durability claims. What they want to know is what the week looks like, what it will do to their house while it is happening, and where this kind of job tends to go wrong.

So here is the honest version, in the order it happens. Most of our installs take one to three days, depending on the size and complexity of the roof and on the weather, and this walks through what each of those days holds.

One thing this guide cannot do is tell you what your tear-off will find. Nobody can, including me. That is why it is in here as a step and not a footnote.

1. Before the crew arrives

   A few days out, material gets delivered and staged, usually in the driveway. On a standing seam job the roll-former comes on a trailer and the coil arrives with it, so plan on the driveway being ours for the duration. If you need a car out, get it out the night before.

   Move anything you care about away from the house: patio furniture, grills, planters, the boat. Tear-off drops debris, and a tarp catches most of it, not all of it. Inside, anything hanging on a wall under the roof or sitting loose on an attic floor can shake. It is worth taking pictures off the wall for two days.

   Tell us where the septic and the sprinkler heads are. A dumpster or a trailer in the wrong spot is an expensive mistake, and it is one you know how to prevent and we do not.

2. Tear-off, and the first real look at your deck

   The old roof comes off down to the deck. This is loud, it is messy, and it is the most important hour of the job, because it is the only time anyone will ever see your decking.

   This is when problems get found: rot at the eaves from previous ice dams, delaminated sheathing around a chimney, plank decking with gaps too wide to fasten into reliably. On the older housing stock across northeast Indiana the decking is often plank rather than plywood, and some of it has been wet at some point.

   Here is the tradeoff with going over an existing roof instead. It is sometimes possible with one layer of shingles and a sound deck, and it saves the tear-off. It also means nobody looked. We inspect the roof and attic first and tell you which situation you are in. I am generally in favor of seeing the deck.

3. Deck repair, priced before it surprises you

   Any soft or rotten decking gets cut out and replaced before anything goes back on. Wide-gap plank gets sheathed over or bridged so the clips have something to bite.

   This should have been on your quote as a unit price before the first shingle came off. A quote that promised no deck repair was not being careful — it was guessing. If the crew finds more than the allowance, you should hear about it the same morning, with photos, before the work proceeds. A number you get after the fact is a number you could not question.

4. Underlayment, and why it matters more than people think

   The metal is the part you look at. The underlayment is the part that saves you if water ever gets past the metal — at a valley, around a chimney, at a sidewall, or when an ice dam backs up at the eave.

   Self-adhered membrane goes at the eaves and runs well past the interior wall line, into the valleys, and around every penetration. A high-temperature synthetic goes across the rest of the field; standard shingle underlayment is not rated for the heat under a metal panel. Ventilation gets looked at now too, while the ridge is open — a roof that cannot breathe cooks its own decking regardless of what goes on top.

   This is also the point where a weather day can stop the job. A dried-in deck is safe to leave overnight. A half-torn-off one is not, so on a day with rain coming the crew opens only what it can close.

5. Panels, formed on site

   On a standing seam roof, the panels are roll-formed in your driveway to the exact length of each run, eave to ridge, so there are no horizontal seams. A 30-foot panel comes off the machine as one piece and goes up as one piece. Watching this is usually the part homeowners find most interesting, and it is the reason the driveway has to be clear.

   Panels go on with concealed clips that hold them to the deck while letting them move — a steel panel changes length across a Midwest temperature swing, and pinning it rigidly at both ends is how you get oil-canning and fastener fatigue. Then the seams are closed with a seaming machine that folds the panel edges together, a single or double fold depending on the profile and the slope.

   Metal shingle and stone-coated roofs go on differently — course by course, interlocked or overlapped — but the staging is similar and the noise is similar.

   Panels get cut with shears or a nibbler, not an abrasive saw. Hot filings from a saw embed in the finish and rust in place, and the roof looks like it failed when the panel was fine until a grinder got near it. If you see a cut-off saw on your roof, ask about it.

6. Flashing, trim and the details

   This is where the money and the leaks both are, and it is the slowest part of the job. Valleys, sidewalls, chimneys, skylights, pipe boots, and every place the roof meets a wall get formed-metal flashing, with counterflashing let into or lapped behind the wall covering where a vertical surface is involved. Sealant belongs behind that joint as a second line of defense, not on top of it as the joint itself.

   Ridge cap goes over a ventilated ridge. Closures go in where panel profiles meet trim — small, cheap, and skipping them is how wind-driven rain and wasps both get in. Snow retention goes on above doorways, walks, decks and anything you cannot move, if it was in the scope; on a metal roof the snow lets go all at once, and that is a design decision, not an afterthought.

7. Cleanup, the magnet sweep, and the walk-through

   The tarps come up, the dumpster goes, and the crew walks the yard, the beds, the driveway and the street edge with a rolling magnet. Tear-off scatters nails, and a metal roof adds its own offcuts and screws. One pass is never enough; we do it more than once, and I would ask any contractor how many times they do it.

   Then walk the job with whoever ran it. Look at the flashing at every wall. Look at the valleys. Ask where the snow guards are and why. Ask to see the photos of the deck before it was covered. If something does not look right, that is the moment to say so, while the crew and the material are still there.

   Now for the honest parts

   It is loud. Tear-off is the worst of it, and the seamer and the fastening are not quiet either. Pets do not like it. If someone in the house works from home or sleeps days, plan around it.

   Your driveway is ours. For the duration — trailer, roll-former, dumpster, material. We protect it, and we need it.

   Weather decides the schedule, not the calendar. Rain, wind above what is safe to carry a 30-foot panel in, and lightning all stop work, and an honest crew would rather lose a day than open a roof it cannot close. If a contractor promises you a date regardless of forecast, be a little suspicious of what else they promise regardless.

   The deck is the unknown. Budget for it and be glad if the allowance goes unused.

   None of that is a reason not to do it. It is what the week actually looks like, so that nothing about it surprises you.

   Now you know what to expect, and what to ask of whoever is on your roof, including us.