If you are looking for a recycled rubber roof there are a few items of concern that you will want to know about before your roofing material choice is complete.
As you can see, this 5-year-old rubber roof has a lot of color variations that are beyond your control. I was at this house on an eighty-degree day and it smelled as if I had just stepped into a Les Schwab Tire Store. Can you imagine your barbecue guests asking you what’s up with the new tire smell?
Sure, the roofing material may last a lifetime but can you put up with it for that long? Sometimes a customer defends their buying decision and then will put up with the consequences. A point to consider will be when it’s time to sell the house and its lifetime rubber roof. The new buyer has a dream for his new home and a mottled-appearing, the stinky roof was not a part of it. So even though this roof may last 50 + years, the appearance and the smell will demand a new roof.
My suggestion is to stay away from all synthetic, recycled, or composite-type roofing that is new to the market, no matter what the promised longevity is. In the roofing world, you have to allow the manufacturers to work out the bugs. Appearance and smell would be the issues in this case.
Another huge concern that continually goes unattended in the roof replacement world is workmanship warranties. 98% of premature roofing failures that we inspect are due to workmanship issues. At Roof Life of Oregon, we inspect 25-30 roofs a day in the greater Portland area. These roofs were installed by other contractors and are failing 30-50% sooner than what the manufacturer stated. It is true that most roofing materials made by the major manufacturers are built to a set standard, so it comes down to workmanship, how it's installed is the key to getting the best value in town.
A cheap roof put on twice costs more than a good roof put on once. Big is not always better. My point is that when it comes down to it, it’s all about verifiable long-term workmanship. Anybody will say whatever it takes to get your roof replacement project but to have them show you a policy and procedure that is tightly managed based on knowledge gathered from fixing others' oversights or just that they were unwilling to go the distance. How about a pictorial of the process so a homeowner could understand the process? If a homeowner demanded this it would directly reduce the chance of getting burned in their next roof replacement project.
At Roof Life of Oregon, we have Portland’s only Transferable Lifetime Workmanship Warranty. If you are serious about your roof and the peace of mind that a good roof can bring, you will want to give us a call at (503) 461-2665 or visit our roof replacement section on our website where we replace all kinds of roofs, just not rubber!