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Enviroshakes vs Cedar Shakes

15 years ago

It's about time to replace my 30 yr old Cedar shake roof. I'm starting to get estimates along with proposals which include synthetic shakes.

So far the roofing contractors don't seem to eager to want to quote Cedar. They claim cost has gone up, life expectancy has gone down and it's becoming hard to get.

My first quote has Enviroshakes as an option. Cost was actually higher then cedar but he claimed within 30 days it weathers just like cedar and has a 50 yr warranty and is maint. free.

This is the first and likely the last roof I ever buy so quality and looks trumps price and I just can't see going with asphalt shingles even though there are some that look decent.

Would you go with a synthetic shake or stick with cedar? Anyone have experince with Enviroshakes? (they're made in Canada out of recycled tires and other crap). One benefit is that they're fire retardant and I do use a wood stove quite often in the winter.

Has anyone regreted going this route vs. real Cedar?

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Comments (3)

rjoh878646
15 years ago
From looking at their website, If I wanted a cedar shingle look roof, i would use them. lets see.., you are recycling waste and keeping it from a landfill and not depleting natural resources. Plus they are warranted for 50 yrs and probably last longer than that. If you can afford the cost, it seems to be a no brainer. From the pictures I could not tell the diffence from cedar shakes.
snowyshasta
15 years ago
I'm not sure whether it's the same product, but we put Euroshakes on our house, also recycled rubber, from Canada, etc. so sounds pretty similar.

Bottom line is that we are replacing it but I'm not sure whether it's the product's fault or the installer. We've had a couple leak problems, I believe caused by expansion/contraction with temperature change. Which you'd think they also have in Canada, and the product's been used a lot there, so I tend to think it might be an installer issue. We had a terrible installer, went bankrupt, now doesn't return calls, etc. so it may not be the product's fault.

We're now adding onto the house and it was cheaper to redo the entire roof with a composite than to add in more Euroshake for the new part, so we're going that route. Not a full 50-year warranty but still not the maintenance of shake, so that's what we're going with.
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annzgw
15 years ago
If looks and quality are a priority, have you considered concrete tiles?

We tried some of the new composite roofing tiles that came out several year ago and they lasted only 2 years. They came with a 30 yr warranty but that was useless after the company (not the installer) went out of business.

I guess not enough testing was done and they (we) discovered after install that it would slowly disintegrate when exposed to sun/rain.

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