Editor’s Note: Pat and Julie Quarve recently attended the 2017 Metal Roofing Summit in Piqua, Ohio. This annual conference is sponsored by Isaiah Industries, manufacturers of the Kassel & Irons steel roofing that Quarve installs. When they returned, we sat down and talked with Pat about why he’s such of fan of this company’s roofing products. Interviewer: Isaiah Industries has a number of products. Which ones do you use? Pat: We use roofing the Kassel & Irons line. They have different products, depending on the area. They have an aluminum line for areas overseas or on the coastline. They have some different options as far as styles go for different dealers around the country. Interviewer: Why is the Kassel & Irons roofing good for the Midwest and for homes in Minnesota in particular? 
Pat: Kassel & Irons is good for the Midwest because it is made out of steel. We used to see aluminum roofing in our area, but not much anymore. Do you wonder why? Aluminum siding used to be popular, but it’s gone by the wayside; now it’s steel or vinyl. You don’t see aluminum siding anymore. The way I look at it is, if you are worried about putting aluminum on the side of your house, I would be even more worried about putting it on the roof, especially if there was storm damage. As you go through the Midwest, especially in the Dakotas, all you see is steel. Steel holds up well in heavy winds, rain, and blowing sand. The pattern on the Kassel & Irons roofing is impregnated with a variation in it so if there was a 2” hailstorm you wouldn’t be able to notice it. This is important for your homeowner’s insurance. I have it on my home and I get 15% off my homeowner’s insurance plus the energy savings. Insurance companies now have exclusions for Class IV metal roof where they won’t replace it just for cosmetic damage. So for lighter gauge metal roofing, particularly aluminum, I wouldn’t take the insurance savings opting for the exclusion would give. But if you have heavier gauge steel like we install, it's definitely something you'd want to take advantage of. With the Kassel & Irons KasselShake, you could have softball-size hail hit it and you would barely notice it. Interviewer: What is the thickness of the Kassel & Irons products for metal roofing? Pat: The metal roofing that we is 29 gauge with a Kynar® finish on it. There is a lot of metal roofing with polyester finishes and organic paint, but in year 10 or 11 those roofs fade out really bad. What we want is the Kynar® coating on the 29 gauge steel. It is actually a G-90. There are different thicknesses of the galvanized coating. You can get some with G-30, G-60, G-90 up. G-90 is good because you don’t have to worry about rusting. Interviewer: So their coatings are superior? Pat: Yes. You don’t have to worry about rusting because of the galvanized coating over the steel. Interviewer: I’ve been reading about the Kassel & Irons products, how they have concealed fasteners for a more attractive look, where some other products don’t do that. Is that correct? Pat: The attractiveness is one benefit of having hidden fasteners, but there are other reasons. There are metal roofing panels that have exposed panels, and they actually screw through the face of the panel. Then they have overlapping seams. With a little bit of wind you’ve got debris or snow or rain underneath. We’ve seen some metal roofs with exposed fasteners that have leaks by year 10 or 12. So a hidden fastener is the only type that we use, as well as interlocking seams versus overlapping seams. Interviewer: And there are different styles of metal roofing, right? How many? Pat: With the Kassel & Irons line there are just two – KasselWood and KasselShake. KasselWood is 5/8” high and has a smaller butt on it, so for story-and-a-half bungalow homes, that panel looks good. And the KasselShake is 12” high and it’s got a fatter butt on it. If you’ve got a bigger home with a longer roof line, the bigger shake would look better on that. The style of the home definitely helps us decide which to use. Interviewer: I seem to recall there is a color visualizer available where someone could get a sense of what their home would look like with either one of those products in the different colors on their home. Do you still offer that? Pat: Yes. Julie works with that in our office, but people can go right to their website with this link. You upload a picture of your home, and it gives you a little bit of a visual to get you started. But a start is all it is. Even going to a home show and looking at the material itself, it’s hard to tell from a brochure or a picture or a piece of the roofing. 
Pat: Kassel & Irons is good for the Midwest because it is made out of steel. We used to see aluminum roofing in our area, but not much anymore. Do you wonder why? Aluminum siding used to be popular, but it’s gone by the wayside; now it’s steel or vinyl. You don’t see aluminum siding anymore. The way I look at it is, if you are worried about putting aluminum on the side of your house, I would be even more worried about putting it on the roof, especially if there was storm damage. As you go through the Midwest, especially in the Dakotas, all you see is steel. Steel holds up well in heavy winds, rain, and blowing sand. The pattern on the Kassel & Irons roofing is impregnated with a variation in it so if there was a 2” hailstorm you wouldn’t be able to notice it. This is important for your homeowner’s insurance. I have it on my home and I get 15% off my homeowner’s insurance plus the energy savings. Insurance companies now have exclusions for Class IV metal roof where they won’t replace it just for cosmetic damage. So for lighter gauge metal roofing, particularly aluminum, I wouldn’t take the insurance savings opting for the exclusion would give. But if you have heavier gauge steel like we install, it's definitely something you'd want to take advantage of. With the Kassel & Irons KasselShake, you could have softball-size hail hit it and you would barely notice it. Interviewer: What is the thickness of the Kassel & Irons products for metal roofing? Pat: The metal roofing that we is 29 gauge with a Kynar® finish on it. There is a lot of metal roofing with polyester finishes and organic paint, but in year 10 or 11 those roofs fade out really bad. What we want is the Kynar® coating on the 29 gauge steel. It is actually a G-90. There are different thicknesses of the galvanized coating. You can get some with G-30, G-60, G-90 up. G-90 is good because you don’t have to worry about rusting. Interviewer: So their coatings are superior? Pat: Yes. You don’t have to worry about rusting because of the galvanized coating over the steel. Interviewer: I’ve been reading about the Kassel & Irons products, how they have concealed fasteners for a more attractive look, where some other products don’t do that. Is that correct? Pat: The attractiveness is one benefit of having hidden fasteners, but there are other reasons. There are metal roofing panels that have exposed panels, and they actually screw through the face of the panel. Then they have overlapping seams. With a little bit of wind you’ve got debris or snow or rain underneath. We’ve seen some metal roofs with exposed fasteners that have leaks by year 10 or 12. So a hidden fastener is the only type that we use, as well as interlocking seams versus overlapping seams. Interviewer: And there are different styles of metal roofing, right? How many? Pat: With the Kassel & Irons line there are just two – KasselWood and KasselShake. KasselWood is 5/8” high and has a smaller butt on it, so for story-and-a-half bungalow homes, that panel looks good. And the KasselShake is 12” high and it’s got a fatter butt on it. If you’ve got a bigger home with a longer roof line, the bigger shake would look better on that. The style of the home definitely helps us decide which to use. Interviewer: I seem to recall there is a color visualizer available where someone could get a sense of what their home would look like with either one of those products in the different colors on their home. Do you still offer that? Pat: Yes. Julie works with that in our office, but people can go right to their website with this link. You upload a picture of your home, and it gives you a little bit of a visual to get you started. But a start is all it is. Even going to a home show and looking at the material itself, it’s hard to tell from a brochure or a picture or a piece of the roofing. One of the best ways that people can get an idea of what a roof is going to look like is to go out to homes where it is already installed. On the home page of our website we have a Google map with blue dots on it for all the metal roofing jobs we’ve done. It’s got the type, the color, and the address, so people can go around and take a look at what it actually looks like on a home.
Something I like about Google listings is when you look us up, it actually shows our office. You can see we have an actual place of business and we’re not working out of our home or a pickup truck like some companies. So I think being able to see the office on a Google map and checking that as well as being able to see how many jobs we’ve done is good for the homeowner.
Quarve Contracting, Inc., is a licensed Minnesota roofing contractor. We specialize in steel and other metal roofs. If you’d like to find out more about what a roof like KasselShake or KasselWood could do for your home, contact us today for a free in-home consultation and estimate.
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