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By Ann Marie Moriarty
Special to The Washington Post
Wednesday, September 27, 2000; 11:23 AM

Metal roofing is hot � but not that sultry, Tennessee Williams's midsummer-in-the-South heat. What's been sizzling in the past decade is homeowner interest in residential metal roofing. These days, metal commands only 4 percent of the residential roofing market, but the Metal Roofing Alliance, a trade group based in Gig Harbor, Wash., anticipates a 10 percent share by 2004 and a 25 percent share by 2012.

Derek Lindeberg, regional manager of Petersen Aluminum Corp., says that in the seven years he's been with the Annapolis Junction roofing supplier, "demand for metal roofing has quadrupled."

Especially in certain areas around Washington. Sales in Maryland and the District are up, Lindeberg says, but the bulk of the demand is in Virginia. "Old Town has almost all metal roofs," he says.

Farther out toward the Virginia countryside, metal is "the traditional material of choice; it's indigenous to the area," says architect Tom Beach of Earth Design Associates in Casanova, Va. The rural homes and outbuildings of Loudoun and Fauquier counties have always had metal roofs, he says. The standing-seam metal barn roof is part of the local residential design vocabulary.

Metal roofs, long used in barns and other rural structures, conjure an authentic simplicity associated with life in the country. But enthusiasm for the material also springs from more pragmatic considerations. The standing-seam look is distinctive, and the material is well suited to this area and much of its housing stock. Local architects say its use helps contemporary designs appear more compatible with historic neighboring structures.

Georgetown architect Alan Dynerman used terne � the lead-tin alloy that most people think of as a tin roof � for a client in Markham, Va. The metal roof, which he calls "part of the design vernacular" for the region, was one of the traditional materials that Dynerman, then a partner in Williams & Dynerman, combined with fresh color choices to produce a weekend retreat for the farm's D.C.-area owners.

Metal roofing also stands out in longevity compared with other materials. Asphalt shingles last up to 20 years � 30 if you buy a premium grade. A metal roof can last two or three times as long if well maintained. Old-style terne roofs are still made by mills in Follansbee, W. Va., as they have been for more than a century. Beach specifies them whenever he has a historic project or a new building that needs to look authentically old. But they need a coat of paint every three to five years. With that maintenance schedule, they last 40 years or more, sometimes much more. Fred "Chip" Novel, of Novel Improvement in Woodbridge, has replaced 125-year-old tin roofs. "The owners just kept them up," he says.

But it's the newer, lower-maintenance materials that fuel the recent burst of interest. Galvalume brand roofing � steel coated with a zinc-aluminum alloy that was introduced 30 years ago � resists corrosion up to 40 years without paint.

In fact, paint doesn't stick to it very well, so if you wanted low maintenance but didn't like silver, you were out of luck. Until about 15 years ago, when steel manufacturers began selling sheet steel with a factory-applied paint finish. Lindeberg's firm stocks 28 colors that carry a 20-year warranty, even against fading. You install it and forget it for two decades. That's a lot of peace of mind for the money.

Afterward you can paint as needed, and the roof will just keep doing its job. Dorset Russell, owner of Russell's Roofing in Winchester, Va., for 39 years, has seen how metal performs over time. "Even if you keep your house for 100 years," he says, "you may not need to reroof."

Life span is a persuasive factor when looking at the initial cost of these roofs, professionals in the industry agree. Lindeberg estimates the cost of materials at $150 to $200 per square (100 square feet). Add installation, and you have a range of $600 to $1,300 a square.

Novel says that at his firm, installing terne will cost about $600 a square; steel will run about $700 a square and copper about $800. Higher price ranges reflect the design and condition of the roof as well as the cost of tearing off old roofing, if necessary.

Prices outside the metro area may be somewhat less, but it's still likely to cost more than twice the price of decent asphalt shingles, at $100 to $200 a square, installed.

"You have to look at the cost-effectiveness over the years of service," says Mark Jones, of Jones Roofing in Alexandria. "It lasts a long time." And, he says, he gets to explain that fact to a lot of Old Town residents, because the Board of Architectural Review requires that historic homes there be roofed with either metal, cedar or slate.

Because of initial cost, the interest in metal roofs began with owners of high-end homes like those Russell works for in Virginia's horse country. Some clients are large farms and estates, such as Ayrshire in Upperville, where he has been reroofing all the buildings with metal � a four-year project so far. "And metal's going on practically all the expensive homes out here," he says, "half-million and million-dollar homes."

Lindeberg says he has tried to market metal roofing to production builders, with little success. "They'll put inexpensive asphalt shingles on a nice house to try to cut costs," he says, "and 10 or 15 years later, the homeowner is coming to me for metal." When they do, he advises them that they can install metal over a layer of asphalt shingles with no worries about added weight, because a metal roof weighs only about a third as much as one with asphalt shingles.

To get all those decades of life out of a metal roof, it's vital to use a good installer. According to Lindeberg, new techniques for installation have almost eliminated the possibility of leaks in the material itself. Installers can buy metal in big coils and cut them to the right length, eliminating horizontal seams. Machines bend the standing seams between panels. New double-lock, clip-fastening systems are nearly foolproof. So, says Lindeberg, "if a roof leaks, it's because it's not flashed properly." That expertise is what people buy when they hire an experienced installer.

So what can damage a metal roof? Not even a hurricane, says Beth Fulton, vice president of marketing for Seaside, a planned community in Florida that mandates metal roofs for all buildings. "When Hurricane Opal came through, shingles and tile blew off houses all around us, but at Seaside, all we saw were a few corners turned up."

Maybe lightning? Richard Christ's Alexandria company, RCI Corp., advises "a grounded lightning rod on both sides of the house." But he says lightning that strikes an asphalt roof would be more likely to penetrate the roof and damage the interior. "Lightning would probably discharge all over a metal roof instead of going through," he says. And a grounding wire would take that dissipated charge harmlessly into the earth.

Heat? Heat can degrade asphalt roofing; metal just reflects it back. Its thermal reflectivity tends to keep a house cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter, especially if the metal is light-colored.

And then there's hail � about the only thing that can do in the finish on a metal roof. Although the steel-roofing industry says most hail doesn't damage their product, a hard hailstorm can cause dents that will crack the finish. Richard Pappalardo, vice president of finance of the Newstead Farm, a horse farm in Upperville, Va., had many of the outbuildings and the main residence reroofed with metal over the past few years. "A freak hailstorm last spring caused a surprising amount of damage, some to the galvanized roofing, some to the roofing with the factory-painted finish," he says. But he's having it all replaced with metal. "The architect and the owner agree that it adds character to the property."

And when they take off the damaged roofing, instead of paying to have it take up landfill space, they can sell it to the scrap metal recycler. But what about noise? If sheet metal is the only thing between you and a rainstorm, it can get pretty loud. But Richard Christ points out that a residential metal roof is applied over a wood roof deck, with a felt paper underlayment. "That cushions the sound," he says. "I've lived in town houses with metal roofs, and I love the lively sound of the rain on a metal roof � there's nothing else like it."