August in Mobile is 96 degrees, humidity you can chew, and a thunderstorm that clocks in around four like it's got a shift to work. Your roof eats that all summer, then some tropical system comes up the bay in September and tries to peel it off.
We came to metal roofing sideways. We built this outfit doing Mobile Siding Installation, and after enough years watching thin panels and rusted fasteners fail on houses we'd just wrapped, we learned what actually holds down here. Now we do both, and we do them the same way: we show up when we said we would, we don't lean on anybody, we don't talk over your head, and we pick the last screw out of your azaleas before the truck leaves.
Below you'll find how the work goes, where we cover, and what folks ask us first. Ring me at (251) 551-3653 and I'll come have a look.
Standing Seam Metal Roof
No exposed screws. That is the whole idea. The panels run in one piece from ridge to eave, the seams stand up above where the water travels, and hidden clips do the holding. Those clips matter more than people think, because 24 gauge steel moves with the heat, and a forty foot panel pinned tight at both ends will oil can and buckle by the second August. We let it float. Low slope porches get mechanically seamed rather than snap lock, since a snapped seam and a Gulf downpour blowing sideways off the Bay are not friends.
A simple gable is a few days. Hips, valleys and dormers add time, and the flashing at every penetration is where a standing seam roof is won or lost. Same fussiness we bring to Mobile Siding Installation, where the fasteners hide too.
Corrugated Metal
Corrugated metal is the honest workhorse of the panel world. Exposed fasteners, ribs you can see from the street, and a look that suits a barn, a carport or a camp house down on Dog River just as well as it suits a home.
The whole job lives or dies on the screws. Every fastener has a rubber washer, and if the gun is driven too hot the washer squishes out sideways and you've got a pinhole that finds you during the first August gully washer. We set them by feel, snug and flat, and we don't skip the closure strips at the eave where wasps and rain both like to get in.
Gauge matters too. Thinner panels oil can and dent; heavier galvanized steel roofing holds its shape in salt air.
We run corrugated metal siding on gable ends as part of our Mobile Siding Installation work when the look calls for it.
Tin Roof Installation
Tin roofs down here are usually 5V crimp or ag panel in galvanized steel, screwed straight through the face with neoprene washers. That is the whole ballgame. Those washers are the part that fails, and a tin roof installation done with the screws driven crooked or gunned down until the rubber squeezes out will start weeping at the fasteners inside of five or six summers. We set them by hand feel, snug on the flat, and we walk a galvanized tin roof at year three to check torque after the panels have gone through a few August afternoons.
Underlayment matters more than the panel. Bare metal over a hot deck sweats in our humidity, so we run synthetic and vent it.
Most one-story houses take two or three days, weather permitting. The trim we bend for galvanized steel roofing comes off the same brake we use for Mobile Siding Installation, so gable ends and rakes actually match.
Metal Shingles
Metal shingles are what I reach for when a roof has too many angles to make long panels sensible. Those Midtown bungalows with three dormers, a hip, and a porch wrapping two sides will eat panel stock in offcuts. Shingles come stamped from steel or aluminum in pieces about a foot or two across, and they interlock on all four sides so the fastener hides under the next course. That interlock is what keeps them home when the Bay hands you a 70 mph gust in September.
Of all the metal roofing systems we install, these are the fussiest to cut. Done poorly, they leak at valleys and hips where somebody face nailed the trim and let it work loose. We run closed valleys with real flashing and hem every cut edge.
The same crews handle Mobile Siding Installation, so your gable trim and roof line finally agree with each other.
Metal Roofs That Look Like Shingles
Some folks want metal up top and still want the house to look like it belongs on Government Street. That's what metal shingles are for. They're stamped steel panels that interlock on all four edges and clip down hidden, so nothing gets face-nailed through the finish, which is where the cheap installs start weeping about two summers in. From the curb they read as slate, shake or architectural shingle. Up close they're a metal roofing system built for the wind that comes off the Gulf, and they won't cup or grow moss the way cedar does in our humidity.
Decking matters more here than it does under a standing seam metal roof. Every dip in the plywood telegraphs through the panel, so soft spots get sheeted over first. If the gables want attention while we're staged, that's a Mobile Siding Installation and it rides on the same schedule.
Corrugated Metal Roofing
Corrugated metal roofing is the exposed fastener kind, screwed straight through the face of the panel into purlins or decking with a neoprene washer under every head. That washer is the whole ballgame. Overdrive the screw and you crush it, underdrive it and it never seals, and either way you get a slow drip over your kitchen ceiling by the second August downpour. We set torque on the guns and walk the field before we call it done.
Panel gauge and coating move the number more than anything else, along with how many valleys, hips and pipe boots your roof throws at us. Down here I push Galvalume over a plain galvanized tin roof, because salt air off the bay is patient.
Those same ribbed panels turn up on Mobile Siding Installation jobs when somebody wants a gable end with some grit to it.
Steel Roofing
Steel is the workhorse behind most of the metal roofing systems we hang in this town. What matters isn't the steel, it's what's on it: a Galvalume or aluminum zinc coating under a baked-on finish, in 24 or 26 gauge. Salt air off the Bay finds every bare cut edge, and rust never sleeps, so we seal cuts, keep panels off treated lumber, and set screws with neoprene washers that won't back themselves out by year ten.
Underneath goes high-temp synthetic underlayment, not felt that turns to dust in a Mobile August. Fastening pattern follows our wind zone, edges and ridge included, because that's where uplift starts.
Three to five days on a typical house. Insulated metal roofing runs longer. The same coating logic shapes our Mobile Siding Installation work, since steel always fails at the edges first.
Galvanized Steel Roofing
Galvanized steel is zinc over steel, and the zinc is the whole deal. Down here that matters more than it does in Birmingham, because salt drifting in off Mobile Bay eats coating for breakfast. I spec G-90 zinc where a galvanized tin roof makes sense, 26 gauge over 29 whenever the budget allows, and a Kynar 500 finish rather than bare metal, which chalks and streaks within a few Gulf summers.
Rust never sleeps, and it starts at the cut edges. Panels sheared on site need the ends sealed and hemmed, not left raw on the eave.
The other killer is mixed metals. Copper flashing or the wrong fastener against galvanized steel roofing sets off a slow galvanic reaction, and you find it as a stain first, a hole later. We use butyl-washered screws driven to the gasket, not past it.
Steel Metal Roofing
Steel is what most of our metal roofing goes up in around here, and two things decide how it ages: gauge and coating. We run 24 gauge where wind uplift is the worry and 26 where the span and the budget allow, on a Galvalume substrate with a baked-on paint finish. Bare steel and salt air off Mobile Bay get along about as well as an Auburn shaker at Bryant-Denny.
The failure people don't see coming isn't rust, it's condensation. Warm Gulf air hits a cold panel in January, drips onto the insulation, and you're chasing a leak that never came through the roof at all. Proper underlayment, a vented deck or insulated metal roofing panels put a stop to it.
Steel works on walls too, which is why plenty of these turn into a Mobile Siding Installation job while we're already up there.
Stone Coated Steel Roofing
Stone coated steel is the panel for anyone who wants the look of barrel tile or wood shake without the weight sitting on eighty year old rafters. It's Galvalume steel pressed into profile, then coated in ceramic granules, so it reads like tile from the street and shrugs off a Gulf gust like steel. Most of these systems go over battens, which gives you an air gap that helps in a Mobile August.
Done wrong, it fails at the cut edges. Every trimmed panel end needs sealing, or you get rust creeping out from under the granules in two or three seasons of salt air. Same with walking the roof: step in the flat of a pan instead of the batten and you've dented it.
Plenty of folks find us through Mobile Siding Installation and learn we shape metal for roofs too.
Standing Seam Roof
Here's what actually makes a standing seam roof worth the trouble: the fasteners live under the panel, not through it. No exposed screws sitting in the sun with a rubber washer that goes chalky by year eight and starts weeping into your decking every time a Gulf storm rolls up Mobile Bay.
Panels get set on floating clips so they can move. A 30-foot run of 24-gauge steel grows and shrinks with an August afternoon, and if it's pinned tight it oil-cans, waves, and eventually splits at the seam. Snap-lock works on steeper pitches. Anything under about 3:12 gets mechanically seamed instead.
We also do high-temp underlayment at eaves and valleys, and foam closures at the ridge so wasps don't move in.
Plenty of our Mobile Siding Installation jobs start as a standing seam metal roof call, because wind finds walls too.
Galvanized Tin Roof
A true galvanized tin roof is zinc over steel, usually a 5V crimp or a barn panel in 26 gauge, and it earns that soft gray patina the same way an old fish camp on the Causeway did. Left unpainted, it weathers. That's the charm.
What kills it isn't the panel, it's the details. Cut edges left raw at the eave start rusting first because the shear takes the zinc off. Screws driven crooked or overtightened crush the neoprene washer, and eight or ten years later you've got a hundred tiny drips instead of one honest leak. Salt air this close to the Bay speeds all of it up.
So we hem or seal cut ends, set fasteners in the flat with a depth-set gun, and use gasketed screws rated to outlast the coating rather than whatever came in the box.
What the job involves
Here's what a metal roof day actually looks like at your house. We strip the old shingles down to the deck, because covering rot never made rot go away, and Gulf humidity finds every soft spot around a chimney or a bathroom vent. Bad plywood gets replaced, then synthetic underlayment, then peel and stick at the eaves and valleys where wind driven rain gets pushed uphill. Panels go on with hidden clips or gasketed fasteners, closures at the ridge, and flashing bent on site.
Two to four days on most houses. Steeper pitch, more valleys, more penetrations, heavier gauge, all of that stretches it.
Where crews go wrong: cutting panels with an abrasive blade. Those hot filings rust into little orange freckles by next summer. We shear or nibble instead.
If we're already doing your Mobile Siding Installation, we'll color match the trim while we're up there.
What it costs
There's no honest flat number for a metal roof cost, and anyone who quotes you one over the phone without seeing the roof is guessing. Corrugated metal or galvanized steel roofing on a simple gable sits at the low end. A standing seam metal roof cost climbs with every valley, dormer, chimney and plumbing boot, because each one gets hand-flashed, and a cut-up hip roof can run a crew three to four days where a straight ranch is done in one. Metal shingles land in between. Tear-off and soft decking from years of Gulf humidity move it too. Call me at (251) 551-3653 and I'll get up there and price the actual roof. For scale, our Mobile Siding Installation work runs from about $3 a square foot for mid-grade vinyl to north of $45 for premium material, and metal roofing spreads just as wide.
Why choose us for this
You've had a roof patched twice since the last blow came up the bay, and what you actually want isn't craftsmanship talk. It's to hire somebody once and not think about it for twenty years.
So here's what we won't do.
No quote that swells later: what we write down is what you sign, unless you ask us to change something.
No vanishing act: the same crew that handles our Mobile Siding Installation jobs sets these panels, and they stay on yours until the trim is done.
No sign-today pressure: our estimate is free and holds whether you call us back Tuesday or next month.
No mess in the azaleas: screws and cutoffs go in the truck, not your yard.
We won't be the cheapest metal roofing quote you get. After the best part of nine years, I know what a standing seam metal roof costs to do right.
Frequently asked questions
Can you install a metal roof over my existing shingles?
Often, yes. If the deck is sound and the code official signs off, we run purlins or a slip sheet over one layer and set the panels on top. But if there's soft decking or two layers already up there, we tear off. Hurricane country is no place to guess what's under a standing seam roof.
Will my metal roof rattle or leak in a storm?
Not if the fasteners are right. Most leaks I see on a tin roof installation come from exposed screws whose neoprene washers dried out around year twelve. Standing seam hides the fasteners under the seam, which is why we push it for anything facing the bay wind.
How do we begin?
Ring me at (251) 551-3653 for a roof look. If you're pairing it with Mobile Siding Installation, we schedule both crews the same week.