Reprinted from Western Roofing magazine September/October 2007.

Work of Ark

Church Uses Stone-Coated Steel as Roofing/Siding for Ark-Shaped Building

by Randy Franz, RF Editorial Services

With its 78° angled walls and wider base than top, Asbury Methodist Church in Livermore, Calif., looks like Noah’s Ark flipped upside-down. The challenge was to keep it as weather-tight as the Biblical boat.

The original builder of the shape used wood, following the tradition of Noah himself. Wood shingles formed the siding from nearly the ground up to flat sections more than 30’ high. When the shingles wore out last year, the church board hired a roofing consultant to determine the best system for reroofing and residing. Bill Grier, Consumer Roof Consultants, Castro Valley, Calif., recommended the church use the MetroShingle stone-coated steel roofing panels by Metro Roof Products. The church board agreed.

“We wanted something with the look of wood but with a longer life,” said Joe Baker, a longtime church member and professional engineer who served as inspector for the project. “We did a lot of research on roofing products, and this is the only one we could determine would give us everything we want.”

A key was the lightweight of stone-coated steel. Baker said asphalt shingle would be too heavy on the vertical portions to hold up by nails. The MetroShingle is less than two pounds per square foot installed. “When it’s nailed up there, it’ll easily stay,” Baker said. An added element was wind-resistance. Livermore sits in a high-wind area, where roofing must meet Class C wind ratings to withstand 80 mph to 90 mph sustained winds. The Metro panel surpasses those standards.

What about aesthetics? Using steel to evoke the hallowed wood of the Ark appears to border on sacrilege… until one sees the shape and color of MetroShingle panels. The walnut color brings a classic wood hue, while the flat contour adds to the notion of exposed timber wood.

“Most people looking at it from any distance think it’s wood shake,” said Troy Miller, president, Western Roofing System, San Leandro, Calif., the contractor that installed the job. “Most are amazed when they hear it is stone-coated steel. Everyone’s very impressed.”

However, it was not an easy project. The height of the building and angle of the walls necessitated the use of man-lifts, along with ladder jacks around the flats. Miller and his team also had to work around 15 windows set only 8” from each other. Once they negotiated such logistics, the Metro panels proved to be easily workable. To ensure even courses around the building, the contractor measured and aligned courses using chalk lines. He wanted to avoid “short courses.” In addition, installers had to place steel shingle panels in the 8” gaps between the windows.

In one especially challenging section, Western Roofing System had to install siding on walls that curved horizontally and vertically. “There was no way we could bend it around the degree change,” Miller said. “If we bent it, it would offset our rows.” Miller’s crew instead used a novel approach by putting ridge caps straight up and down.

The manufacturer specifications for high-wind applications required double nailing and elastomeric asphalt field tape in areas of discontinuity. Installers hid the field tape with trim pieces. Fasteners in these areas were 1 1/2” hex-head screws with neoprene washers. In other sections, Metro mandates double the standard number of 1 1/2” ring-shank roofing nails.

For this church, the MetroShingle is like a work of Ark. •••