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Monthly Newsletter - Charlie Smith, President

Note: See Previous Newsletter

Greetings

If you haven’t heard, the price of steel is going out of site right now. As I mentioned last month, 2 US mills crashed in January taking 54,000 tons of daily production out of the market resulting in a supply driven shortage. Last month I said our prices would go up 5% at the end of February and 5% in March and then maybe more. If you don’t have revised pricing from us on jobs you are bidding, make sure you don’t just plug in numbers. Just to give you an idea what the mills are doing, the price increase between my January delivery and April delivery for bare Galvalume is up over 20%. We are all in for some difficult times over the next few months. I realize many of you have hard dollar contracts for jobs bid months ago that will be delivering later this year. We will work with you but you need to let us know what you have coming up. 

Metal Roof Survey

I appreciate those who took our survey. It will help us get better.

New Metal Products

• Horizontal Wall panel
• Our 16” wide WAVE Panel roll former will be in next month. Keep us in mind for those applications. 
• Vertical ribbed wall panel V-7 
• The V-7 is back. This is a narrow coverage, ribbed fascia/wall panel that we ran a long time ago. It has come in handy on a couple of jobs already.

• Striated Flush Panel - We are now striating our flush panel. This is helpful on vertical applications where there is a tendency for oil canning.
• 238 T - We will have a 2 3/8” tall T-Rib panel out shortly. This is a 2 piece panel with a T-shaped rib and a separate seam cover that you use a mechanical seamer to put on. Our initial testing in December had this thing under 6” of water for 30 days with no leaks.

Metal Panel World Record

We did a world record ASTM 1592 uplift test on a 24 gauge x 16”wide panel. It failed at 220 psf on open purlins 60” o.c. This will put it on almost any open frame re-roof or retrofit without adding additional framing in the edge zones.

This is a huge deal!

This is a super panel loaded with really good features:

• Bi-directional installation
• Start installing where you want.
• Use angle cuts in the same roof plane from hips or valleys
• Panel is easy to replace in middle of field
• Great uplift
• There is little chance of the seamer munching the panel
• And you can even pre-install your clips.

Here are some photos:

Before test

After test

I’m glad I wasn’t standing there when that thing came apart.

Coping

We did our first round of 24 gauge coping tests and have sent more samples up for testing.

Zinc

We are very close to doing our first Zinc job and will be stocking Zinc Coil and Flats

Have a good month. If you are in Vegas for the metal roofing show, stop by and visit: Booth 1601.