To win ATAS International's annual home of the year title, a property must showcase a stunning roof constructed with the company’s metal products. This year’s winner, installed by Howard & Sons Inc., delivers on those expectations. 

The property 

A sprawling luxury home in Temecula, California, the residential property features multiple rooflines and unusual shapes (including cupolas and eaves) that challenged the roofing company’s ingenuity and maximized ATAS’s metal roofing materials. The result is a stunning gray roof that is architecturally beautiful and energy efficient.  

The project 

For their new roof, the homeowners selected ATAS’ Dutch Seam panels—continuous standing seam panels with an integral seam in dove gray, 24-gauge steel. The panels have a smooth finish and are 15 inches wide, with a seam height of 1 ½  inches. San Bernardino, California-based Howard & Sons Inc. installed the roof, and the materials were purchased from JB Wholesale Roofing and Building Supplies/SRS in Riverside, California.     

Howard & Sons’ installers appreciated that the Dutch Seam panels provided ideal materials for such a complicated project, according to Amanda Hermes, the company’s marketing manager. The width matched the seams' height, and the panels created a perfect shadow line for the intricate roof.   

“No other panel gave the roof that strong of a standing seam line,” Hermes said.   

The challenges 

The final result is showstopping, but the project still tested the company’s highly skilled installers. The house was crooked, and the foundation was off kilter. As a result, the penetrations and flashings were not square, Hermes said. Also, installers had to work around an HVAC unit and a roof hatch. To reach the highest points and pitched sections, Howard & Sons installed scaffolding.   

Some roof sections required custom work, including box gutters, downspouts and all-new Z metal.  

Upon closer inspection, observers will see that the roof features two colors. The panels and box gutters are dove gray, while the rake metal and downspouts are white to match the house's color. All the rivets were customized to match the dove gray panels.  

The house’s rounded sections and smaller roof areas posed the most significant challenges, according to Howard & Sons. To reduce errors and material waste, Hermes said installers measured each section from the middle and started working from the center outward to ensure the panels were centered and symmetrical. If not, she said, a panel could have ended in the middle on one side and three-quarters on the other, interrupting the uniform look.   

To fit each section correctly, installers had to customize much of the work. For example, they cut the eave in one area to fit the panel underneath and custom flash that area because it was prone to leaking.   

“There were no two roofing sides that had exactly the same length, so everything had to be measured and cut to fit on site,” Hermes said.  

She added that ATAS’s Snap Lock system made the project more manageable than other metal roofing panels because it allowed the roofers to customize the panels without sacrificing quality or ease of installation. 

Other benefits 

The property’s new roof has the added benefits of being environmentally friendly and energy efficient. The light gray color, with a solar reflectance index (SRI) of 55, helps to reflect the sun’s strong rays in southern California. Reflective roofs such as this help lower the surface temperature, allowing the structure to retain heat and cool air better, depending on the season.  

In the future, if the homeowners decide to install solar panels, the new roof is solar-ready. Metal roofs are more durable than other roofing materials, allowing them to house a solar system longer than other roofs. (According to insurer State Farm, metal roofs  last between 40 to 70 years, compared to 12 to 20 years for an asphalt roof.)  

The result is an attractive, sustainable, customized roof that will help to improve the home’s energy efficiency and curbside appeal for years to come.