Manufacturer Stands Behind His Roof Tile

As the nation’s largest manufacturer of concrete roof tile, we wanted to respond to “Staying on Top of Roofing Options” by Marcie Geffner, Feb. 11. The opinions stated by the contractors quoted are just that: opinions.

There is a reason that 95% of all newly constructed homes in Southern California have a concrete tile roof. Concrete tile is the product with the most durability and lowest life-cycle cost and is aesthetically pleasing. The citing of data from Popular Mechanics that calls tile heavy is misleading since we manufacture a whole line of products for re-roofing that are all less than 600 pounds per square, a figure that meets most building departments’ criterion for re-roofing without an engineer’s report.

The article addresses product warranties at length and states that “no standards regulate manufacturers’ use of them.” We take our lifetime warranty seriously and are confident of the length of the warranty based on our history. As a manufacturer, we do not arbitrarily place a warranty period on our product.

It is stated in the article that heavier roofs will be less safe during seismic activity. Actually, our products have been used in a USC research study that suggested that concrete and clay roof tiles withstand seismic forces far greater than the 0.8g (gravity acceleration) that the Uniform Building Code requires for other building components.

STEVE CHAMBERLIN

Irvine

The writer is a vice president of sales and marketing for Monier Life Tile.

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