AJ02 said:
Just curious....this isn't a situation with your company, but just wondering what happens when a roofing company offers a 5-10 year warranty, and then they go out of business?
It depends on the warranty the roofer offered. If it's through their company, and they go out of business, then you're out of luck.
Our certifications are:
Owens Corning Platinum
GAF Master Elite
Certainteed Select Shinglemaster
So for instance, the 10 year I offer on GAF, that's through GAF. We install it, if I go out of business tomorrow, GAF carries it. Same with Owens Corning. We've been around 20 years, but the shingle companies have been around a lot longer and they likely aren't going out of business.
We just have to carry the certification, which we do, we have to install per the requirements of that warranty, which we do, and we have to register the warranty, which we also do just because it's the only way to assure it's been registered and is valid.
That's for workmanship warranties. These manufacturers and others usually come with lifetime warranties against defects. That's out of the box, automatically.
As with any warranty, the details are what matter and many times those long term warranty (Certainteed has a 25 year or more) isn't worth it because in 9 years golf ball hail falls on it and everything is out the window.
As for engineering roofs for hail, products have come a long way. They exist. The issue is that the cost of these, like a Class 4 shingle, are usually not worth the cost when you consider someone in Austin is going to get hail that exceeds the impact ratings and they get damaged. Plus, insurance companies are starting to back out of paying claims when you have impact resistant shingles, so I have been told. If you go through insurance, the deductible for replacing a standard arch shingle is less than the upgrade cost in most cases. That said Malarkey is my go to for Class 4. It's reasonable.
Personally, I am a standing seam metal guy. It's impact resistant. I have it on my home now. Some people just can't stomach the cost of it and some HOA don't allow it even if you want it, and if you aren't in a house long term, it's not worth it, in my opinion. However, I get hail on the hill country somewhat regularly and the roof simply isn't something I worry about when it happens. This last storm had slightly bigger than golf ball sized hail and there are maybe two hits that are only visible up close. In Hondo, I did several metal roofs after the big storm a few years ago, and that was baseball and bigger hail. Even those roofs while damaged, did not leak in many cases. It's a stout product.