Communicating With Customers About Metal Roofing Myths

MCS Influencer Haley Iselin says a good discussion with a customer about myths in metal roofing can help fix their misconceptions.

Editor’s note: The following consists of a conversation between MCS’ Gina Cali and and Metal Roof Specialties' Vice President Haley Iselin.

Gina Cali: Hi Haley. Thank you so much for joining MetalCoffeeShop this month to answer the August question of the month as a MetalCoffeeShop influencer. And the question is, what is the best way or how to communicate with consumers about metal roofing myths such as noise, rust, et cetera?

Haley Iselin: Thanks. So one of the ways that we have been successful in communicating kind of those misconceptions about metal roofing is a couple things. I mean, hopefully we always have the opportunity to have a good discussion with a consumer where we can explain and help them relate to past experiences or share examples of where they may have been in the past that led to those beliefs.

For example, both metal roofing will rust and maybe metal roofs are noisier probably come from a long time ago. Maybe growing up and being in a barn type building where there's no insulation, no solid roof deck underneath the metal that they heard the rain maybe underneath that, or being in a big huge commercial building and in a heavy rainfall, maybe hearing it on the inside. So the noisy ones are usually pretty easy to explain to people in that regard of explaining. That's probably where that belief came from. And now in most residential construction and even commercial construction, things are being done differently and they're not an open structure or barn outside or carport or situation where they have heard the rain more because of metal.

And then rust kind of similarly, the technology today is so much different than it was a long time ago where we saw more rusty metal roofing. So the way that steel, which is the primary source of most metal roofing products, although there is others such as aluminum, copper, those will not rust on their own. But the steel ones are because they're such a popular type and they have a coating now that has that heavy zinc or zinc aluminum alloy, which is a protection to the steel core. And so even when those panels are cut, the factory cut certainly due to the sacrificial qualities of zinc that's in that coating it will protect those edges also from resting. The same thing can be done when tin snips are used to cut metal, how it bonds that coat over the cut as it's cutting. You don't get that same benefit when you're cutting with a saw blade something else. So, that's one of the ways that metal roofing, again, doesn't rust today like it may have many, many years ago.

There is some other myths that we have come across. Some people think lightning's going to strike more easily on a metal roof, and it doesn't increase the likeliness of that. That you can't walk maybe on a metal roof, which is another thing that people think you can't do and you certainly can. So without getting into all those details, I guess it is giving examples to people, which has always proved to be very helpful in my experience of showing them why we have that belief and then showing them why it isn't relevant maybe anymore or it never was. We also have on our website a kind of myth buster section. And I know that I think the Metal Roofing Alliance website also maybe has that information and maybe even the RoofersCoffeeShop does have a section for that or will have a section for that as well to help explain some of those things better.

Gina Cali: Thank you, Haley. Great insight and we'll definitely check out that metal myth busters that you mentioned.

Haley Iselin is the vice president of Metal Roof Specialties. See her full bio here.