Metal Roofing in San Antonio, TX

Two Cities With an Escarpment Between Them

San Antonio is a roofing market in two halves, and the Balcones Escarpment is the line. South and east of it, inside Loop 410, the city is 1950s to 1970s ranch houses in neighbourhoods like Northwood, Terrell Heights, Harlandale and the streets off Fredericksburg Road: long, low-pitch gables, often 3:12 or less, built for one layer of three-tab shingles and now carrying their second or third. A low pitch is exactly where a mechanically seamed standing seam roof earns its money, and exactly where a snap-lock or an R-panel quote from a general roofer will leak in the first spring. North and west of the Escarpment, outside 1604, it is 1990s-and-later subdivisions on limestone: Stone Oak, Timberwood Park, the Dominion, Alamo Ranch. Steeper roofs, more valleys, HOAs, and a shared memory of April 12, 2016.

The 2016 Line

The hailstorm of April 12, 2016 crossed the north and northwest side, roughly from Helotes and Leon Valley across the 1604 corridor to Stone Oak, and it is still the event people date their roofs by. Most of those roofs were replaced in 2016 and 2017 with builder-grade shingles, which in this sun puts them at the back half of their life now. If your address is in 78230, 78231, 78248, 78249, 78258 or 78259 and the roof is from that replacement wave, a shingle-to-metal conversion is the decision in front of you, and we will want to look at the deck for the damage the 2016 crew covered over. If you already have metal from that wave and it took the smaller storms since, the hail inspection tells you where it stands before the next one.

Historic Districts and Independent Cities

Inside 410, several of the neighbourhoods a metal roof suits best are local historic districts: Monte Vista, King William, Dignowity Hill, Tobin Hill, Lavaca. A roof change on a contributing structure needs a Certificate of Appropriateness from the Office of Historic Preservation. Standing seam has a genuine history on San Antonio houses, and it is regularly approved on rear slopes and porches; on street-facing slopes a slate-profile metal shingle clears review where a panel will not. Alamo Heights, Olmos Park, Terrell Hills, Castle Hills and Shavano Park are separate cities inside the metro with their own permit desks and, in Alamo Heights and Olmos Park, their own architectural review. We pull the permit where the house actually is.

Heat, Roofs and CPS Bills

San Antonio runs past 100 degrees for weeks in a normal summer. A dark shingle roof over a 1960s attic with original insulation is the reason the back bedrooms don't cool, and a reflective metal finish, bare Galvalume or a Kynar "cool" colour, is the cheapest part of fixing that. Ask for the solar reflectance index on the finish you pick. On the older houses inside 410 we also look at ventilation while we are up there, because a metal roof on an unvented 1955 attic is only half the answer.

Existing Metal, Repairs and Inspections

The city already has a lot of metal: R-panel on workshops and carports in the older neighbourhoods, decades-old 5V crimp on houses near downtown, and a decade of standing seam on the north side. The repair and inspection pages cover all of it. We also handle commercial metal on the light-industrial units off 1604 and the churches and school buildings across town. Home ground is the whole city; the suburb pages for Schertz and Cibolo, Fair Oaks Ranch and the rest cover what is different once you cross the county line.

San Antonio metal roofing questions