Lifetime Shingles
Warranties are incredibly important for most if not all homeowners. The idea of spending thousands, or even tens of thousands, on various home components such as a furnace, an air conditioning unit, or a roof is stress inducing. Doing so without insurance or assurance against faulty materials adds a new level of fright. However, in the case of shingles, the phrase lifetime warranty is in play. While the notion of a lifetime warranty sounds wonderful to those making the purchases, there are caveats involved that must be considered as well to avoid overspending or having to ultimately buy replicate items.
The first thing to remember is that lifetime is a highly deceptive term. When many people hear that, their initial thought points towards their own mortality, which is wrong. Lifetime, to them, means their life span. Unfortunately, this is not the case, at least not exactly. It can mean the time spent at that house, or the span of life spent residing in the house where they purchased a roof. This means that the transferability of the warranty might not be extended to someone else who buys the home, though this can occur as well. However, even if one considers the possibility of buying a home and staying in it for the next 60 years, that “lifetime” warranty will not quite live up to the billing.
For one, the lifetime warranty does not usually, if ever, cover faulty installation. This means that if a roofer does a sloppy job of putting on quality or faulty shingles and the shingles fail, the homeowner may possibly not recoup expenses, even if the faultiness of the shingles is a culprit. Poor installation can be thought of as the more harmful factor. In such cases, homeowners must be sure a workmanship warranty is involved. These are usually 5 or 10 years in length and protect the homeowner against bad workmanship that may have resulted in poorly installed roof components.
Another thing to remember is that lifetime does not cover normal wear and tear due to time, and extreme weather events are also excluded. This means that those 70 miles per hour winds that rip shingles in half trump the warranty. Also, the sun damage that occurs over 30 years will not be covered. How is that possible for a lifetime warranty? The answer is that the lifetime essentially covers faulty materials. For example, if shingles are installed and 6 months later they are bubbling, something they should never really do and certainly not in that length of time, the homeowner could and should get new shingles, as long as they were correctly installed. There is a bit of a statute of limitations, though. If alga shows up on algae resistant shingles 11 years after correct installation, the homeowner cannot get new shingles. Within that lifetime warranty, there will be certain limits set, such as for alga resistance, which often is 10 or so years.
Lifetime shingle warranties can be tricky, unless people ask questions or read the fine print on the materials. One should be able to trust a quality roofing company, like Fusion Roofing and Restoration, to provide answers to questions pertaining to both manufacturers’ and contractors’ warranties.
