Mario Williams is a partner at Lone Star Roofing, a third-generation family-owned and operated roofing contractor located in Texas. Williams is known throughout the state as an expert in commercial and industrial roofing techniques. In this article, explains the importance of choosing a quality roofing manufacturer.
Choosing the right roofing manufacturer for your project is always important, whether the project itself is big or small. However, the quality of the manufacturer you decide on is especially important in major commercial projects and other large projects of the same variety—like the kind we handle frequently at Lone Star Roofing—because in these types of jobs, the manufacturer will actually be supplying the warranty for the building’s owner, as well.
A manufacturer’s warranty is extremely common in commercial roofing jobs, in addition to the other warranties you might get from the contractor himself. Because these warranties are backed by the manufacturer, building owners can generally rely on them in the event that something should happen to their roof in the future.
The most common of these roofing warranties supplied by the manufacturer is called an NDL warranty, which stands for No Dollar Limit warranty. So that warranty is backed by the manufacturer, and covers anything that could happen which would be the fault of the manufacturer or the product itself.
Situations like this are why it is so important to hire a good contractor for the job, too, actually. Because if you choose to hire a certified roofing contractor—who is specifically certified by the manufacturer whose products you are using on the project—then what will happen is that the manufacturer will send representatives from its company to supervise the entire project and watch what the contractor is doing.
You can expect that an inspector representing the manufacturer will be out on the job site every step along the way of construction, making sure things are done correctly and according to protocol. Once the job has been finished to the inspector’s satisfaction, he will then issue a special certificate that notes the project’s completion and guarantees the building’s owner to a full repair should something happen. Because this manufacturer’s inspector has been on the job site for the length of the project, and saw the construction site before, during, and after the new roof was installed, he can ensure that the project was done correctly. So these NDL warranties can be an added guarantee for anxious clients.
Overall, these manufacturer warranties give building owners an extra level of security. The contractor who installed your roof could go out of business the next day after the project was completed, and still if something went wrong, the manufacturer would still be there to take care of it free of charge. Once you get that certificate from the manufacturer, you are awarded a certain guarantee that everything will be taken care of if a situation comes up.
Of course, this warranty in itself is reason why you need to be careful when selecting the right roofing manufacturer. If the manufacturer goes out of business, which is less likely than a construction company in general, then your warranty may not be valid.
So that is why in these cases it is usually best to go with a major manufacturer with a record of quality. It is critical that you use a roof that is manufactured by a highly reputable, established, long-term company that you know is going to be around for the length of your roof. If you have done this, then you are already one step ahead of the game.
