The Three Warranties on a Metal Roof, and Which One Matters

Ask a roofing company about the warranty and you will usually get a single confident number. Twenty five years. Forty years. Lifetime. It sounds like one promise covering the whole roof.

It is not. A metal roof has at least three separate warranties, issued by different parties, covering different things, for different lengths of time. On a Highland roof those are 45 years on the panel coating, 40 years on the eavestrough system and 5 years on our workmanship. Knowing which is which is the difference between a warranty that helps you and a number that made a sale.

The first one: the coating

The steel panel has a coated finish, and the coating carries a warranty from the company that made it. This is usually the longest number in the conversation and the one that ends up on the brochure.

On Highland's panels, the coating is warranted for 45 years.

What a finish warranty addresses is the finish: how the coating holds up rather than how the roof performs. What it excludes varies between manufacturers and between products in the same range, which is exactly why the written document matters more than the number. Ask for it and read what is not covered.

One thing to watch for across the industry: manufacturers often advertise their longest available figure, which may belong to a premium coating that is not the one on your roof. Ask which figure applies to the actual product being installed on your house.

The second one: the eavestroughs

People forget this one entirely, because they think of the eavestroughs as part of the roof. They are a separate product, usually from a different manufacturer, with their own warranty.

Highland's eavestrough system is warranted for 40 years by its manufacturer.

So a roof and eavestrough project done on the same day by the same crew can carry two different material warranties from two different companies, expiring five years apart. That is normal. It is only a problem if nobody told you.

The third one: the workmanship, and why it matters most

The first two cover the materials. Neither covers the installation.

This is the important part, because most roofs that fail early do not fail because the steel was bad. They fail at the details: flashing around a chimney, a valley, the transition where a roof meets a wall, a fastener pattern that did not account for movement, ventilation that was never really finished. A 45-year coating warranty is worth very little on a roof that leaks at the chimney in year three, because the coating is fine. The coating was never the problem.

The workmanship warranty comes from the installer, not the manufacturer, which means it is only as durable as the company behind it. A long workmanship warranty from a business that has been trading for eighteen months is a different proposition from a shorter one from a company that has been in the same trade for two decades.

Highland warrants its workmanship for 5 years. That is the cover on the installation itself, separate from the two material warranties above, and it is backed by a business that has been roofing in Ontario since 2004.

Ask any installer you are considering for the same thing, in writing, and notice who can answer without hesitating.

The questions to ask about any of them

Whichever warranty you are being offered, the same six questions apply, and they are worth asking about all three.

• Who issues it? The manufacturer, the installer, or a third party. This tells you who you will actually be dealing with.
• How long, and from what date? Installation, purchase, or manufacture.
• What is excluded? Always the most informative section of the document.
• Is it prorated? Many long material warranties decline in value over time, so year 40 is not worth what year 4 is worth.
• Does it transfer? If you sell the house, does the warranty go with it, and does the new owner have to register it?
• Who do I contact? A warranty with no named route to a claim is not much of a warranty.

What to do with this

When you are comparing quotes, do not compare the biggest number on each one. The biggest number is always the material warranty, and it is the one that does least for you. Ask each company for three things in writing: the coating warranty, the warranty on any eavestrough or accessory work, and their own workmanship terms.

Some will send all three without blinking. Some will send one and change the subject. That, on its own, tells you a great deal about which roof you are actually buying.

If you would like ours, ask when you request a quote and we will include them.