Lynden, Washington
Metal Roofing in Lynden
Houses, farmhouses, shops and barns. Metal roofs detailed for the part of the county where winter wind is a design load rather than a weather report.
Lynden has more metal roofing on it than anywhere else we work, and that is not fashion. It is dairy country, it has been building large outbuildings for a long time, and metal has been the sensible covering for a barn or a shop roof for most of that time. The result is that a lot of people here already know what a metal roof is and what it does over twenty years, which makes for a more informed and considerably more sceptical conversation than we have in the city.
The other Lynden fact is the wind. Fraser outflow comes down out of the canyon in winter and lands here harder than anywhere else in the county. It is cold, it is dry, and it is sustained, and it is the single thing most likely to find a fastening detail that was good enough somewhere sheltered. When a panel edge fails in Whatcom County, there is a fair chance it failed in Lynden and it failed in January.
The housing mix runs from older farmhouses and their outbuildings through to newer in town builds, and those want different answers.
In this town
What we do in Lynden
Metal Roof Installation
New metal on houses and on agricultural buildings. The building type changes the system, the fastening schedule and the edge detail more than the square footage does.
Metal Roof Replacement
Older metal on outbuildings reaching the end, and composition on in town houses reaching the same point from a different direction.
Metal Roof Repair
Most of our Lynden repair work is wind related: lifted edges, opened end laps, and fasteners that have been worked loose by years of the same load in the same direction.
Standing Seam Metal Roofing
On in town houses where the roof is visible and the owner intends to stay. Less common on the working buildings, where exposed fastener is usually the better value.
Also relevant here: Metal Roof Leak Repair and Metal Roof Inspections.
Local detail
What is different about a Lynden roof
Wind is a design load here, not a weather event
Fraser outflow is sustained, directional and cold. Edges, rakes, ridge and end laps all get fastened for that, and the correct answer is measurably more than the minimum. This is the detail we most often find underbuilt on roofs somebody else put on.
Large spans behave differently
A long barn roof moves a lot with temperature and it collects load differently from a house roof. Fastening it as though it were a big house is how you get oil canning, worked fasteners and eventually a lifted edge.
Unheated buildings sweat
A shop or a barn with no insulation and no attic will condense on the underside of a panel in the right conditions, and the owner will report it as a leak. Getting the assembly right, rather than hunting a leak that is not there, is frequently the actual job.
People here already know metal
Which we like. The conversation starts further along, the questions are better, and nobody needs the general sales pitch. It also means a bad job gets recognised as a bad job quickly, by people who talk to each other.
Questions
Lynden roofing questions
How much would it cost to put a metal roof on a 1400 square foot house?
Floor area is not roof area, and the gap is largest on single storey houses, which most of the older Lynden stock is. Pitch, complexity and the number of penetrations move the price more than the square footage of the house does.
Cost figures are not published here yet. We will not put a number on a page that we have not stood behind on a roof, so ask and we will price your roof.
Does a metal roof devalue a house?
No. The idea comes from a period when metal roofing on a house meant agricultural panel on a residence and looked like it, which is not what a modern residential system looks like. On the working buildings around Lynden metal is simply expected. On a house, a well detailed metal roof is a selling point for the same reason it is a good purchase: the buyer is not going to have to deal with it. Nobody can honestly quote you a percentage either way, and be careful with anyone who does.
Why don't more people use metal roofs?
Up front cost, mainly. It is a bigger cheque than another composition roof and the payback is slow, which rules it out for anyone moving soon or working to a tight budget. There is also a supply of installers issue: fewer roofers detail metal well, so in some markets the choice is between an expensive good job and a cheap bad one. And some of it is simple habit. Composition is what most houses have, so it is what most people replace it with.
Get a Lynden roof looked at
Tell us the address or the neighbourhood and roughly what is going on. We will come out and look at it properly.
Nearby
Also nearby
Bellingham is about twenty five minutes southwest, Ferndale is west across the farmland, and Everson, Nooksack and Sumas are all close by up the valley.
Ask about a Lynden roof
That is with us
We will get back to you within a working day. If water is coming in right now, call (360) 555-0142 rather than waiting on this.