Shingles need to be replaced every 10-30 year depending on wear and their type. It just seems so uneconomical and such a pain.
I get that metal conducts heat more easily, but couldn’t you just let a thin layer of moss grow on your metal roof and call it a day? Even if they dry out in the summer, I doubt metal + thin layer of dirt would conduct heat more than black shingles
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I work in an industry where metal cladding for buildings is common.
I can tell you that a building sheeted in metal are *expensive*. The metal alone can amount to a third of the cost of the entire structure. You’re absolutely not saving money by going this route–at least, not in the context of a building you want to be heated on the inside, like a home. What you’re saving here, if anything, is time and stress in installation. You’re actually paying a premium for the long service life of the material. Which can be super worth it if you don’t ever want to have to service the structure ever again after it’s been built the first time.
Often when anyone asks the question, “X exist in Y industry, why don’t the Y people do X more often?” it’s almost always because the options those people are taking instead are simply less expensive. That typically means monetarily expensive, but it can also mean time expensive, or skill expensive. If there’s already a relatively cheap, relatively easy-to-install option that people who construct buildings are already familiar with that does the job well enough (such as common asphalt shingles, for some climate zones), people are going to keep using it. Why wouldn’t they? Even if there’s a “”better” option, how much “”better”” can it really be if it’s more expensive, and comes with a learning curve to install where things can be screwed up?
And then there’s just the factor of there being inertia against change. Specifically in the case of homes, a lot of neighborhoods have homeowner association bylaws that prevent metal-clad buildings from being constructed in the area, because closed-minded homeowners think they are “ugly” and will lower the property value of all the other houses in the area if they are used. Say what you will about whether you think that opinion is well-founded or not… what matters is that as long as there exists a large group of people who think certain kinds of buildings shouldn’t have metal roofs, metal-roofed buildings will be fighting uphill battles to become normalized in that kind of construction.
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