Certainteed News 9-23-10 A bad review

Roofing/Construction Questions
#1

First of all, everyone that knows me
knows all i have ever done was praise Certainteed.
I swear i have been their biggest salesman.
When i first entered this site, i didn’t hardly see anybody praising certainteed.

Several brands have i praised since coming to this site.
Certainteed, Tamko, and Atlas and sometimes owens corning. Well all praising must come to an end.
Especially since every shingle roof is one big experiment where companies are changing workers, suppliers, techniques and formulas.

I have stated my reasons for stop using tamko.
Because there shingle wasn’t attractive enough to me and their nailing mat was not durable. Not so in the past…

I have stated my reasons for stop using Atlas,
only because their black shingle was too dull and flat. No other issues with their pinnacles.
Its a quality shingle as long as the bundles are all the same lot number. (huge and time wasting issue)
enough for me to say enough is enough.

I stopped using Owens corning ARCHs because i thought their shingles were not attractive enough and concerned with the leaking reports on the duration line. I still like their 25year supremes. Their “classics” are complete junk.

So now i come to my only last shingle that i loved.
Certainteed, of whom i had zero complaints until now.

CERTAINTEED, What ever happened to LIGHT and DARK colors BLEND for a very NATURAL LOOK???
please remove this from your advertising since it is not true anymore.

Me and my customers are not happy with your shingles.
I have not noticed a difference in the actual quality of your shingle. thank goodness.
But the beauty of the shingle has been sorely compromised.
Moire black and charcoal in particular.

I showed a customer a moire black landmark i did in 07. I sold the job telling them that they were going to get the same beautiful roof. You made a liar out of me. It looks like a boring, dull flat piece of crap.

last week i installed charcoal landmark for a builder.
Just a few doors down was a black landmark installed a few years ago. Total night and day difference in looks. One looks awesome, one looks disgraceful. You can barely tell its an architect.

Right now i have a new customer that is not getting what they want, and that is the moire black as shown by their neighbor. I have told them that that shingle is NO LONGER AVAILABLE. They are going with their second choice weathered wood. I have confirmed that the light and dark colors still blend in that scheme.

I am sure that one li’l complainer is not going to get you to change back to what you had, so my only recourse is to inform you, the roofing world and then choose another shingle.

I will be trying out the durations and the high def timberlines
I have always hated GAFELK because of their quality.
but they do know how to make the shingle beautiful with their granule process. Yours was better.
but not any longer.I notice that owens cornings black durations looked real nice too. Light and dark shades with a nice shadow line. Yours was better, but not any longer.

I’ll be alternating between these two companies and determining which shingle to use full time based on my opinion of its longevity during my hands on installation.

All this said, i still think you are the king of quality, but i need a good looking roof too. I will be looking forward to coming back home after you have corrected this grave error in judgement. If you ever do.

Yours truly,
roof-lover

#2

damn bro thats deep :evil:

#3

What plant are your Certainteed shingles coming from?

#4

Oxford, North Carolina

#5

IIRC our Grand manors and Carriage Houses come from the Oxford plant.

Our Landmarks come from the Avery plant.

#6

Maybe it’s me but the blacks in any brand even certainteed are always bland. I can’t recall them ever having much color contrast. I try my best to avoid selling them if I can.

In my opinion, a beautiful roof is nice to have but I doubt having a couple color issues is a big enough deal to change manufactures when you think the one you use now is a better shingle. Do you really want to give them a better looking but crappier roof product? Not that elk is that bad but they definitely aren’t my first choice. Certainteed is.

#7

[quote=“Gatesroofing”]Maybe it’s me but the blacks in any brand even certainteed are always bland. I can’t recall them ever having much color contrast. I try my best to avoid selling them if I can.

In my opinion, a beautiful roof is nice to have but I doubt having a couple color issues is a big enough deal to change manufactures when you think the one you use now is a better shingle. Do you really want to give them a better looking but crappier roof product? Not that elk is that bad but they definitely aren’t my first choice. Certainteed is.[/quote]

All thoughts i have been strugling with.
The Moire black was really, really beautifull and was one of my favorite colors. I am going to give GAFELK a chance on my next job. If the quality is not there, i will drop them. I put a certainteed shingle and GAFELKs right next to each other and looked over them carefully. The gafelk exposed part of the shingle was actually slightly thicker. But the unexposed part of the shingle was much thinner. I see that GAFELK has improved their nail-line width. It was completely identical to certainteeds(one full inch). I was happy to see that. I did check several colors and not all had the full one inch of nailing area. Some were 3/4-7/8. I turn the shingle over and evaluated that too. Certainteeds looks of better quality. Gafelk looked like they used the cheaper glass base sheet and certainteeds looks like they used the more expensive organic base sheet. We will see…

#8

As a homeowner, I looked at every single Landmark TL shingle and I don’t like any of the colors. I’ve seen them on roofs and they look hodge podge. I particulary don’t like it when any shingle manufacturer mixes browns with blues. This is such a color clash and the roofs end up looking orange. This is just my opinion.