Century farmhouse metal roof in Central Ontario

What an old farmhouse asks of a metal roof

Farmhouses in this part of Ontario were rarely built in one go. A main block goes up, a kitchen wing follows, someone adds a dormer for light upstairs, and a later generation encloses a porch to make a sunroom. Each of those pieces tends to have its own pitch, its own framing and its own idea of what straight means. A roof on a house like that has to cope with all of it at once.

There are practical pressures too. Rural houses sit out in the open, so wind and drifting snow hit them harder than a house in a subdivision. Plenty still heat with wood at least part of the year, which means metal flues coming through the roof. And nobody wants to be up a ladder on a tall gable fixing a leak every few years.

That is why standing seam metal roofing suits this kind of building. The panels run in one length from ridge to eave with no exposed fasteners, the seams stand above the water line, and the concealed clips let long panels move with the seasons instead of working screws loose. The plain vertical lines also sit well on a plain old house. Folded metal roofing has been on Ontario farm buildings for a very long time, so it looks at home rather than bolted on.

What you can see in the photo

The aerial shot shows most of the house, and it is a good catalogue of the details that make a farmhouse re-roof more than a simple job:

• A main gable roof and a cross wing meeting in a valley, so panels from two directions finish into one line.
• A small gable dormer set into the main roof, with its own little standing seam roof and a small pipe on top.
• Two metal chimney flues coming up through the roof, one near the main ridge and one at the peak of the wing.
• The enclosed sunroom along the front, with a lower roof that turns a hipped corner at its end and runs in under the second-storey windows.
• Charcoal panels against white siding and white eavestroughs, which keeps the house looking like a farmhouse rather than something new.

Why the sunroom and dormer matter most

On a house like this, the big roof planes are the easy part. Leaks on old farmhouses almost always start at the joins: where an added roof meets an older wall, where a dormer interrupts a slope, or where a flue passes through.

A sunroom roof is usually lower and flatter than the main house, and it sits directly under the upper eaves. That means it takes the snow and meltwater coming off the roof above as well as its own. Where it meets the wall, the flashing has to turn up behind the siding, not simply be sealed to the face of it. On lower-pitch roofs we look at whether a double-lock 180° seam is the right call rather than single-lock.

Dormers are the opposite problem: small planes, lots of cuts, and water from the whole slope above being pushed around two cheek walls. Our crew bends the trim for these transitions on site, so each piece is made to the actual opening rather than to a standard size that almost fits.

How we approach a farmhouse re-roof

We measure every roof from a site visit or a drone survey, never from a phone call, and on an old house we want to know what is under the shingles before we say anything about price. Older farmhouses often have plank boards rather than plywood. Sound planks take standing seam clips well. Soft, split or sagging boards get replaced, and if there is more than one layer of shingles, or the boards are not dry and flat, the answer is a tear-off rather than going over the top.

Ventilation gets a hard look as well. Many old attics were never built with soffit intake, and a new roof is the right moment to fix that. The panels are roll-formed on the driveway in one continuous length, the clip spacing is set to the site's ground snow load, and where a steep upper roof sheds onto a lower one, like the main roof above this sunroom, snow retention is something we assess before we quote it.

Everything is written into the specification before you commit: gauge, seam, finish, underlayment, flashing, snow retention, ventilation, warranty and exclusions.

If you own a house like this, ask your roofer

These questions will tell you quickly whether a contractor has thought about your house or just your square footage:

• How will you flash the sunroom or porch roof where it meets the wall?
• What is under my shingles, and how will you check the roof boards before quoting?
• How will each flue and vent pipe be flashed, and is that trim made to fit?
• Does my attic have intake ventilation, and if not, what will you do about it?
• Where will snow from the upper roof land, and do I need retention there?