Mother nature hasn't been too kind to homeowners or insurance companies in the past year or so. Six hurricanes made landfall in the United States last year, four of them causing more than $42 billion dollars in damage in Florida; over Memorial Day Weekend 2004, tornadoes, high winds and heavy thunderstorms caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage from Louisiana to the Great Lakes; and just this past March, a hail storm caused $100 million dollars in damage in Central Texas in a matter of minutes.
“ As you can imagine, we're installing a lot of these right now in Florida ”
Michael Mayfield, who lives in Austin, Texas, remembers the day the storm hit like it was yesterday. "I was sitting in my living room looking out the window as hail stones the size of golf balls pounded the roof and bounced in the yard. I thought to myself, oh no, here we go again," he says.
About twelve years earlier, a similar storm had pounded his roof so hard, the cedar shakes split in two. "The damage was so bad, the entire roof had to be replaced, and I wasn't the only one with roof damage," he says. "Nearly every roof in the neighborhood suffered the same fate."
This time around, his house is one of the few in the neighborhood that came through the storm unscathed. He credits luck, the orientation of his home, and his new roof. "When the hail came down, it fortunately blew into the side of my house that's all brick, so no windows were exposed; and when it hit the roof, each hail stone bounced off as if it were a ping pong ball. Not a mark left on it."
When he replaced his roof twelve years ago, Mayfield didn't go with cedar shakes, ceramic tiles or asphalt, but a material guaranteed to stand up to hail -- a Gerard roof made of steel tiles coated with stone and acrylic resin. "I saw one of their roofs go up on a house a few blocks from my own and liked the way it looked so I started asking questions. When I found out it came with both a written guarantee against hail and a transferable warranty, I decided it was the roof for me," he says.
"The warranty is one of our biggest selling points," says Russ Earnhart, Gerard Roofing Technologies's Central Regional Manager, "but customers tell us they also like the design options." Gerard's stone coated roofs are available in five profiles to aesthetically achieve the looks of wood shingles, concrete or clay tile, and one that resembles asphalt roofs.
"When people drive up to my house, they often comment on how nice my 'tile' roof looks in a neighborhood with mostly cedar shingle and asphalt roofs," says Mayfield. "Unless I tell them, they have no idea it's really a metal one."
As far as cost, one of these roofs will run you about the same as a concrete tile or wood shingle roof; but Earnhart says, the added benefit of protection from the elements "makes it priceless." This material is class-A fire rated, and it can stand up to hail storms and winds gusting up to 120 miles per hour. Earnhart points out that the Gerard roofs in hurricane-ravaged Florida protected most homes through the storms while a lot of the cedar shake, asphalt and tile roofs blew away. "As you can imagine, we're installing a lot of these right now in Florida," he says.
People affected by this past year's natural disasters are putting on roofs better able to stand up to fierce winds and battering storms. They are also installing skylight guards, replacing vulnerable windows with shatterproof ones, and outfitting glass doors that lead outside with rolling shutters.
For more information about Gerard Roofing Technologies or to find the certified installer nearest you, log on to www.gerardusa.com or call (866) 218-4552.
Courtesy of ARA Content
