Synthetic Slate Roofing
In today’s rapidly advancing technological world, there are more options for nearly everything you do, including roofing. Have you decided what roofing material to use on your new home yet? Perhaps you are redoing the roof on an existing roof. Are you going to use the same roofing material that failed you the last time?
Have you considered synthetic slate roofing? Whether you have or have not, we aim to teach you enough about it today so you can make an educated choice on whether it is a viable option for your home.
If you are not in the roofing business, there is a good chance that this is the first time you have even heard of synthetic slate roofing. Although, chances are that you see it all the time, but probably have mistaken it for real slate roofing. Synthetic slate roofing is a synthetic material made to look like the real thing.
Synthetic slate roofing material is both cheaper and lighter than real slate roofing. Those are the two qualities that make it a realistic option for your home. Let us dig a little deeper and see if we can find some more reasons to include or exclude it as a roofing choice for your house.
Reasons to use Synthetic Slate Roofing
• Synthetic slate roofing material is cheaper than real slate and many other roofing materials also.
• It is less heavy too, as we mentioned before. The weight that your roofing material puts on your home’s structure is an important and sometimes overlooked factor. Using a lightweight roofing material will extend the life of your roofing structure and everything underneath it really.
• Looks a lot like the real thing. As we also mentioned above, you may have seen synthetic slate material before and not even known they were not the real deal.
• Synthetic slate materials often carry better warrantees than other options. So compare.
• You have a wide choice of colors and textures with synthetic slate as well.
Disadvantages to Synthetic Slate as a Roofing Material
• Not all Synthetic slate materials are the same. Some are good and some not so good. So, we see this as a major disadvantage because you have to do your homework to make sure not to purchase one of the inferior synthetic products.
• To be honest, we had to dig deep to find disadvantages, but every option has them. The second one we need to mention is looks. Even though they can look pretty darn close and fool most people, a person with a well trained eye can still notice the difference.
• The last disadvantage we want to mention is that the synthetic slate just doesn’t have the proven track record that real slate has. Real slate has been used as an attractive and durable roofing material for hundreds and hundreds of years. It has held up under the most grueling conditions, most important of which is time. Real slate roofs have been known to last up to one hundred years and more in some cases. Synthetic roofing has not been around long enough to boost about that.
So, while there are some disadvantages to going with the synthetic slate roofing on your home, it does seem like the advantages may outweigh them. It also seems as if the main disadvantages do not apply in all cases or even in most. There apparently is a wide assortment of synthetic slate roofing materials.
The best advice we can give you is that if you want to go with synthetic slate on your home, just do your homework or talk to someone you can trust that has. Talk to them and find out what types of synthetic roofing are the best and find out what ones to avoid. We say to ask a professional because there are so many of them, we can’t evaluate each one here.