has anyone used bellaforte? heres a link http://www.davinciroofscapes.com/files/projects/29.pdf yikes. nevermind. i just realized that this is almost as expensive as real slate. i suppose we will have to stick with asphalt ;) i would still enjoy seeing your slate lookalikes, however

Inspire Shingles are a division of Tapco. Our experience with other Tapco products has been positive, so we felt that a dependable company would be standing behind the warranty. We also traveled several hours to view Inspire, DeVinci, and Eco-Star shingles on actual roof installs. The Inspire shingles looked less plastic-y and had more realistic color variations. To date, we have had absolutely no issues with the roof, but time will tell. My DH is a commercial (flat) roofer by trade, and he installed EVERY shingle himself so I'm very comfortable with the quality of the application. Many roofs that fail are not due to the product chosen, but rather the improper/shoddy install of the product. I will say that the roof was a bit shiny in appearance when we completed the install, but now that several years have gone by it has become a more matte finish and even more realistic. Good luck with your project.

We opted for a synthetic slate roof and did quite a bit of research prior to installation. We opted for slates by davinci (I think their official name is davinci roofscapes), and have been happy thus far. Check out their website as it's quite nice. As the above poster has indicated, synthetic slate is by no means a cheap endeavor. Real slate really wasn't that much more (materials AND labor), but finding good slate installers in our area is increasingly more difficult, so we looked into synthetic slate. We narrowed our selection between davinci and Majestic slates (made by carlisle co.) and I think both companies and products seem equally good. We've had our roof for roughly a year and have been happy thus far. FYI, we had a special underlayment used (ie not felt) as I believe there is concern that felt will not necessarily hold up as long as the roof is guaranteed. Best of luck!

Hi running, IâÂÂll be meeting with the roofer later today and unless he has lots of experience with synthetic installs we will be replacing the cement tile with new cement tile. ItâÂÂs very difficult to find any reviews of the synthetic roofs as the early inventions had some problems with brittleness and edge curling over time. In most of the instances it was all down to bad installs. Many of the earlier companies went bust. However, I have read very good things about the DiVinci synthetic roofing materials and in particular the DiVinci Bellaforte. But again, itâÂÂs all down to the install. We have no plans on changing our roofer as we know this guy and have used him before so if he has little to no experience with synthetics my decision will be easy we will do cement.