Asphalt Shingle Roofing near you

The honest explanation is not that shingles are bad. It is that Australian housing solved the same problem differently and then built an entire industry around the answer. Steel sheet suited long spans, low pitches, cyclonic tie-down and rainwater collection, and it could be rolled locally. Clay and concrete tiles suited the masonry suburbs. Between them they took the market, and the standards, the trade licence classes, the batten and fixing systems and the installer training all followed the material rather than the other way round.

That leaves a shingle roof carrying costs that have nothing to do with the product itself. The pool of Australian roofers who have laid one is small, and a quote from somebody learning on your house is worth less than it looks. Replacement material for a storm repair may have to be ordered rather than picked up, and colour and profile matching across a decade of production is not guaranteed. Insurers and building surveyors will ask questions they would never ask about a sheet roof, and you should have the manufacturer's documentation ready before they do.

So the comparison worth making is not shingle against tile on appearance. It is whether the appearance you want is worth a narrower field of installers, a longer repair chain and a compliance path you have to demonstrate rather than assume. For some houses it clearly is. For most Australian houses, the mainstream materials are mainstream for reasons that hold up.

Part 7.3 of the ABCB Housing Provisions is titled roof tiles and shingles, which misleads people who read only the heading. Its clauses are about tiles: fixing tiles and hip, ridge, barge and capping tiles, bedding and pointing with a flexible pointing material to AS 2050, sarking, anti-ponding and water discharge. Where the Code addresses slates and shingles as their own product, in Volume Two, the materials it names are terracotta, fibre-cement and timber, pointed at AS 4597. Bitumen is not on that list, so the two things Australians call shingles are not the same thing in regulatory terms, and it is worth establishing which one a quote means.

Because the ordinary deemed-to-satisfy route does not name the product, the manufacturer's installation instructions stop being advice and become the compliance document. Ask for them by product name and read the parts that matter: the minimum pitch the manufacturer allows, the underlay required beneath the shingles, the nailing pattern, the treatment at eaves, valleys, hips and ridges, and what the manufacturer says about wind uplift. Then ask your installer to confirm, in writing, that what they intend to do on your roof is what that document shows. A quote that cannot name the product or produce its instructions is not quoting a compliant roof.

Site conditions come next and they are the same for any covering. The wind classification for your address, determined under AS 4055 or AS/NZS 1170.2, decides the fixing regime, and it reflects the wind region, the terrain, the topography and the shielding around the house rather than the suburb as a whole. If the address sits in wind region B, C or D, the cyclonic provisions apply and roof fixing becomes a structural matter rather than a covering detail. If the address is on designated bushfire prone land, the house and its associated Class 10a buildings and decks must be designed and constructed to reduce the risk of ignition, and the deemed-to-satisfy path is construction to AS 3959 at the bushfire attack level assessed for the site, or the NASH steel framed construction standard for bushfire areas.

Underneath, the ordinary Australian roof rules still apply. A pliable membrane used as sarking complies with AS 4200.1, flashings should be purpose made and formed rather than improvised out of sealant, and metals in contact or upstream of one another have to be compatible, since the Code bars lead upstream of aluminium and zinc coated materials and copper upstream of galvanised coatings. Where the roof will feed a drinking water tank, the prohibition on lead is absolute, and it applies to flashings and to gutters and downpipes alike.

Who may do the work is a state question, and shingles fall in an interesting spot. In Queensland the QBCC's roof tiling trade class expressly covers cutting and fixing roof tiles of concrete, clay, metal or similar material, shingles and shakes to roof and fascia structures, along with setting out and fixing battens, bedding, pointing and associated flashing, sarking and anti-ponding boards, and refurbishing and maintaining roofs other than painting them. So in Queensland the shingle installer you want is most likely a licensed roof tiler, and a QBCC licence is required for building work above the value threshold the QBCC sets, with plumbing and drainage work needing a licence at any value at all.

In New South Wales the picture is different in a way that catches people out. Roof plumbing there is its own licence class covering guttering, downpipes, roof flashing and roof coverings, but the definition expressly does not extend to work on non-metallic tiles, glass, concrete, timber products, thatching or bituminous membrane materials. A bituminous shingle roof therefore sits outside roof plumbing and is general building work, requiring a contractor licence once the job passes the value threshold in the Home Building Act, with substantial penalties for contracting without one. In Western Australia only a registered building practitioner or registered building contractor may perform particular building work, the Building Services Board is the registration authority supported by Building and Energy, and registration operates under the Building Services (Registration) Act 2011 with thresholds that vary by building class.

LokalMatch is how you find the short list. You describe the job once, saying that the covering is or will be shingles, naming the product if you know it, and giving the storey height, roof area and whether the address is bushfire prone or coastal, and matched roofers contact you directly. Those businesses pay for the requests they receive. LokalMatch does not lay roofs, does not set or quote prices, and does not vet, rank or recommend any business, so asking for the product documentation and checking the licence class on your state regulator's own register is still yours to do. Given how few Australian roofers have laid shingles, ask specifically how many of these roofs they have done and where.