Metal roofing on a heritage home

Somebody in an 1880s brick house in Orillia calls about a standing seam roof and asks, half apologetically, whether the town will even let them. Usually they have heard a story from a neighbour about a permit that dragged on for eight months, and they are already braced for a no.

The answer is more often yes than people expect. Folded metal roofing is older than asphalt shingles in this province by a wide margin, and heritage staff generally know that. What gets refused is rarely metal as a material. It is a specific metal roof: too wide, too shiny, too modern in profile, with the original details stripped off underneath it.

Here is what actually governs the decision, and what to have ready before you ask.

First, find out what you actually are

There are three situations and they are not the same thing. People use “heritage” for all of them and then get surprised.

Designated under Part IV of the Ontario Heritage Act. Your individual property has a designation bylaw passed by your municipality. That bylaw names specific heritage attributes: the brick, the window openings, a porch, sometimes the roof form or the roof material itself. Altering a named attribute needs a heritage permit from council before you touch it.

Inside a heritage conservation district, Part V. The district has a plan and a set of guidelines, and alterations visible from the public realm need a permit. Collingwood’s downtown works this way, as do districts in Markham, Unionville and Newmarket across York Region.

Listed on the municipal register but not designated. This is the one people misread most often. A listed property is flagged, not protected in the same way, and the rules around listing have been amended a couple of times in recent years. Do not rely on what somebody told you in 2019. Call the clerk’s office and ask for your property’s current status in one sentence.

None of the above, but the house is simply old. No permit, no committee, no constraint beyond your own judgment about what suits the building. Most century homes in Barrie, Innisfil and rural Simcoe County sit here.

Five minutes with the municipal heritage register or the planning department settles which of the four you are. Do that before you get quotes, not after.

What the review is actually looking at

Heritage review is about appearance from the street and about not losing original fabric. It is not a materials science exercise. Once you understand that, most of the guidance in a district plan becomes predictable.

Visibility. Front elevation and anything seen from the public sidewalk carries almost all the weight. A rear slope facing your own back yard is usually treated with far more flexibility. On a house with a prominent front gable and a plain rear, the conversation is really only about the front.

Profile and scale. A 19th century Ontario roof had narrow pans and a fine seam. A wide modern panel on a small Victorian reads wrong immediately, and reviewers notice it even when they cannot name why. Panel width is the single detail most likely to decide the outcome, and we cover the general logic in standing seam durability and style.

Sheen and colour. High gloss looks like a farm building. Matte and low-gloss finishes read as historic metal and go through review with much less friction.

Exposed fasteners. A screw-down agricultural panel on a designated house is usually a straight refusal, and honestly it should be.

Retained features. Chimneys, decorative cresting, finials, dormer cheeks, moulded eaves returns and built-in gutters are frequently named attributes. Removing one because it was inconvenient to flash around is the fastest way to turn a routine permit into a problem.

What tends to pass

Narrow pan mechanical lock, in a matte or low-gloss finish, in a colour that existed on Ontario roofs before 1930. Charcoal, near-black, a weathered grey standing in for old terne plate, and deep green on the right house. Our colour guide goes through how those hold up over the decades, and green is the one to be careful with on a prominent elevation.

Flat-lock panels on a porch roof, a bay or a low-slope section, which is close to what was originally there on many of these houses.

Concealed clips and no visible fasteners on the field of the roof.

Snow retention that is planned as part of the design rather than bolted on afterward. On a main street building in Collingwood or Owen Sound, where the roof sheds onto a public sidewalk, retention is not optional, and a reviewer would rather see it drawn on the submission than discover it later.

What tends to get refused: wide contemporary pans on a small house, corrugated or ribbed agricultural profile anywhere visible, bright or high-gloss colour, and metal shingles pressed to imitate slate. That last one is genuinely inconsistent between municipalities. Some accept it as a reasonable substitute, others treat imitation as worse than an honest different material. Ask before you specify it.

The case where we tell you no

If the designation bylaw names the roof covering itself as a heritage attribute, which happens on slate and cedar roofs, you may not be permitted metal on the primary elevation at all. Replacement in kind is sometimes the only approvable option, and slate work is a different trade from ours.

We would rather tell you that at the site visit than after you have paid for a permit application. Sometimes the sensible answer is metal on the rear and side slopes where it is permitted and does the real work, with the original material repaired on the front. Sometimes the answer is that this is not our job and you want a slate specialist.

There is a related judgment call on the premium end. On a small heritage roof where the visible area is modest, the heaviest gauge and the most expensive finish are not always where your money does the most. A well-detailed roof in a standard architectural gauge, with the flashings and the eave work done properly, will outperform a heavier panel installed carelessly every time. The gauge decision is worth making on the actual roof rather than by reflex.

Built-in gutters, the detail that catches people out

A lot of Ontario’s older brick houses have a built-in box gutter formed into the cornice rather than a trough hung on the fascia. It is often a named heritage attribute, and it is often the reason the roof is being replaced in the first place, because the lining has failed and it has been quietly wetting the wall for years.

You cannot simply close it up and hang a modern trough outside the wall on a designated property. That changes the profile of the cornice, which is exactly the thing the designation protects. The approvable route is relining it properly in metal, formed to the existing box with real expansion allowance, outlets and overflow scuppers. That is fabrication work, it takes time, and it needs to be priced into the job at the start. We go through both options in eavestroughs on a metal roof.

Timeline, and why it decides your season

This is the practical part people underestimate.

A heritage permit application goes to staff, often to a municipal heritage committee that meets monthly, and then to council. Council has a statutory window to respond, on the order of 90 days from a complete application, and a committee that meets once a month can absorb several weeks on its own. Add the time to assemble a proper submission and the panel lead time once you are approved.

Two consequences. Do not order steel before the permit is in hand, because a colour or profile change after approval means starting the conversation again. And work backwards from the install you want. A permit application filed in April can easily put a good install in the fall, which is fine, because fall is the window we would pick anyway.

What makes a submission go smoothly

Municipal heritage staff are generally reasonable people who want to say yes to a well documented application. Give them something to say yes to.

• Current photographs of every elevation, including close-ups of the eaves, chimney and any decorative metal.
• The exact profile and panel width, stated in inches, not a brochure.
• A physical colour chip and, ideally, a small sample of the actual panel and finish.
• Photographs of a comparable completed roof on a similar building.
• A plain statement of what is being retained: chimney, cresting, gutter profile, dormer detailing.
• A note on snow retention where the roof sheds onto a walkway or public sidewalk.

We put that package together as part of the quote on heritage properties, because a vague submission is what produces the eight month story your neighbour told you about.

The short version

Metal is usually approvable on an Ontario heritage property. Narrow pan, matte finish, historic colour, concealed fasteners, original details kept. Confirm your actual status with the municipality first, read the district guidelines if you are in a district, and build the permit timeline into the schedule rather than discovering it in August.

We work on older buildings across Simcoe County, the Kawarthas, Muskoka, Grey Bruce and up through Collingwood and the Blue Mountains. You can see what a heritage job involves on our services page or in Orillia and the surrounding townships.

If you are not sure whether your house is designated, listed or neither, call 705-816-5282 or get in touch. We will look at the roof and tell you plainly what is likely to fly.