Now people are spending more and more time in their country estates. Far from the hustle and bustle of big cities, someone is engaged in creativity, someone gardening, and someone just takes a break from the intense rhythm of modern life. One way or another, the arrangement of your private home is a very important matter, and roofing materials for summer cottages play an important role in this.
Today's building materials market is literally replete with a wide variety of roofing options for houses.
A lot of shapes, textures and colors, both traditional and the most innovative, will easily confuse an unprepared person who decides to understand this area in order to choose a reliable roof covering for their own private housing.We decided to make this task a little easier and describe the most common types of roofing for summer cottages.
In this article, we will also try to give comparative characteristics of roofing materials so that a thoughtful owner can make his choice based on his personal requirements and preferences.
Types of roofing materials
At the moment, the following types of roofing are the most widely used:
- Natural tiles. A classic type of roofing based on natural clay. Due to the unique properties of this material, such a coating has a number of advantages over more modern competitors, which allows it to firmly hold the palm in its class.
- Flexible (bituminous) tiles. It is a more economical option for the previous roofing. It has an appearance almost completely repeating natural tiles, but is made of modern technological materials.
- Metal tile. Most often made of high-strength galvanized steel, the coating has the appearance of ordinary tiles.
- seam roof. Such a roof is assembled from flat sheets of metal, interconnected using a special technology. Due to its simplicity and economy, this type of coating is still one of the most popular.
Thus, the range of modern solutions for creating roofing for a private house is represented by a number of very different materials, each of which has its own advantages and disadvantages.
natural tile
The most traditional and at the same time the most reliable type of roof today. Classical tiles are made from ordinary clay, but the latest types of tiles may contain a certain amount of additional substances such as polymers and other modern reinforcing additives.
The main features of natural tiles, which provided it with a leading place among roofing materials, are:
- Excellent thermal insulation performance. Thanks to this, a comfortable atmosphere is always maintained in the interiors covered with natural tiles. The covering made of natural clay equally well resists winter colds and summer heat.
- Good fire safety. The tile is made of refractory materials that perfectly resist any heat and flame. So this roof material provides the necessary level of fire protection, which reduces the cost of additional refractory materials.
- Protection from wind and moisture. Whatever blizzard would not rage outside, it would never penetrate under the densely laid layer of natural clay tiles. In addition, the excellent absorbent properties of clay allow you not to worry about the accumulation of condensate under the roofing. Which again allows you to simplify the design of the roof as much as possible, without risking quality.
- Resistance to external factors. The tile elements are not subject to corrosion, various pests, or exposure to ultraviolet radiation or various chemicals.
- Durability. This property follows directly from the previous paragraph.Because natural clay confidently endures all possible natural threats. The coating made from it will last a very long time, requiring only periodic maintenance and possible minor repairs.
- Aesthetics. As they say - the last item on the list, but not least. It was the pleasant appearance of a cozy and comfortable village house that made the tile practically the standard of visible roofing.
However, despite all these advantages, a tiled roof has its drawbacks. One of the most important is the complexity of the design of the tile roofing.
Such a coating consists of many rather small elements, often of a very specific shape, which must be securely fixed both on the outside of the roof and in the general roof sheet.
Such work may seem to many to be rather complicated and unnecessarily long, so the creation of high-quality natural tiles requires a lot of patience and many other more specific skills.
Soft tiles
This material looks like natural tiles, but is much easier to install and maintain.
In addition, unlike tiles made mainly from relatively expensive natural clay, this type of coating is almost entirely made from modern inexpensive materials.
The basis of soft tiles is fiberglass impregnated with a special solution with the addition of bitumen. After that, an adhesive coating is applied to one side of the resulting material, and a special decorative layer is applied to the other.
The technology for the production of such a coating is closer to rolled roofing materials than to real tiles. However, thanks to modern decorative coatings, such tiles can look very natural.
In addition, the method of applying such a coating is incomparably simpler than the creation of a tiled roof.
Attention! To create a roof from bituminous tiles, it is enough to simply glue it to the prepared surface, and seal the joints between the individual elements of the coating accordingly. This process will take quite a bit of time and effort, and its result will please the eye for quite some time.
However, durability is not its strong suit. roofing material.
Due to the peculiarities of production and the specifics of the materials used, such a coating can be considered, in fact, a temporary solution that requires periodic renewal. However, this feature may not be so significant when using such a coating for a simple decoration of a country house.
metal tile
This material is essentially a compromise between the reliability of natural tiles and the simplicity of artificial turf.
The elements made of high-strength steel have a slightly larger area than their clay brothers, and thanks to the properties of the metal, it is much easier to fasten them together.
Thus, a roof made of metal has the following key characteristics:
- Simplicity of design. It is much easier to fasten large sheets of metal together than small clay parts. Therefore, such a coating will have greater reliability with less labor input.
- material reliability.Galvanized steel, from which the vast majority of metal tiles are made, is incredibly durable and resistant to many external influences, including mechanical ones.
- Comparative durability. Properly assembled and treated, metal plating can last for many years with very little maintenance.
- Attractive appearance. Metal is a highly technological material, therefore, with proper handling, it can be used to make a coating of almost any shape, structure and color. The variety of types of metal tiles available on the modern market will please many fans of creating non-standard compositions. Therefore, a house covered with such a roof will always look stylish and modern.
Following the advantages of the metal tile, its disadvantages should also be mentioned. The most serious of these is the susceptibility of metal to various types of corrosion due to excessive amounts of moisture.
Both natural precipitation and various trifles, such as evaporation and condensate accumulated under an improperly assembled roof, can contribute to this. All this inevitably leads to damage to the coating material and, as a result, the appearance of a leak in the house.
Damage can be minimized by using a special protective coating on the roof surface, as well as by adding special insulating layers and structures under it.
seam roof
Another type of roofing is metal, however this time simple flat sheets of material are used.
The main feature of such a coating is a special reliable type of fastening of individual elements to each other, after which this type of roof got its name.
Attention! The seams created using the seam technology are particularly resistant to moisture penetration, which can significantly extend the effective service life of a metal roof.
Due to this increased reliability and ease of assembly, seam roofs still remain one of the most commonly used types of coatings, both for summer cottages and for many other types of buildings in the private sector.
Summarize
In addition to all the above types of roofing, there are a number of less significant types of roofs made from a variety of modern composite and polymeric materials.
However, it is quite difficult to fully cover each of them in one article, so we decided to focus on a few of the most popular options.
The choice of suitable roofing materials for your own private house or summer cottage is a strictly individual matter.
The decision to use one or another type of roof should be made in accordance with the current situation - the wishes of the owner, the surrounding climatic conditions and the goals set for a particular roof.
Each task has its own solution, and the variety of modern roofing materials provides all the conditions so that everyone can find the solution they need.
The only thing that is needed for this is to spend a little time to understand their features and properties in order to find the most optimal solution to the issue of choosing a roofing.
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