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The Tracewater Homes Podcast brings you inside the world of modern homebuilding, market trends, and the partnerships shaping the future of residential construction. Known for their innovative steel-frame homes, Tracewater dives into what today’s buyers want, how the industry is evolving, and the experts who help bring every project to life. Whether you’re a homeowner, agent, or builder, this podcast delivers insights, inspiration, and behind-the-scenes conversations from the front lines of construction.
All right, welcome back to another episode of Tracewater Homes podcast. I am Brent with Tracewater Homes and I'm joined by Matt, also of Tracewater. And today we've got a special guest, TJ, with King's Roofing.
Thank you so much for being on our podcast today, TJ. We're going to go over the roofing options that we offer at Tracewater Homes and the benefits of those options. So I guess let's get started with GAF Timberline HDZ shingles.
If you don't mind just telling us a little bit about GAF, the Timberline HDZ line and, you know, some of those benefits that our homeowners can expect from that product. Yeah, absolutely. GAF has been around a long time.
They used to be a film company back in the day and got into the shingle market and started buying up some of its competition. It bought up Elk years ago and then just kind of continues to reinvent itself throughout the industry. One good thing about GAF, of many, I suppose, is that it's not on the stock market.
And I like to tell a lot of people that, not that being on the stock market is bad. It is a good thing. But for that, they obviously have a lot more wiggle room on because it's not always about driving profits, right? Sure.
It's always about, it's also about redevelopment. It's about putting it back into the community. And it's about making sure that what they're putting out and taking care of whatever it may need to be is a focus of their point.
And GAF has always wanted to focus on their clients. A big client for GAF is obviously the contractor, then which returns into the client of the individual home. And so the resources there are huge.
And their workhorse, more or less, is the GAF HDZ Timberline brand. And it's a great shingle. One of the best out in the market.
So where it's got an algae protection into it. So it's got like copper minerals. A lot of other ones have copper minerals as well, but it's an expanding, like a time release over time to where it keeps the algae growth off the roof.
Some of the competition, again, has some of those, but they do very well at that. And then the nailing strip. The nailing strip is also, and that's where they get kind of the Z part of it in there.
It's a thicker nailing strip to make sure that it's holding the product down. If you think about a storm that comes through and what is the weakest part of a home or shingle or roofing product, in this particular case on a shingle, it would definitely be the uplift on the face of the shingle where the other one meets. And then also where the nails are penetrating and holding the product down.
So if you can get a good thick piece of meat, like I call it, to get penetrated into a shingle, that's going to be less likely to blow off. Because we've seen in the past, obviously, if you've had some shingles fly into your house from the neighbors or whatnot, the nails are still in the deck. Yeah.
The shingle's on the ground. Shingle's gone, exactly. So if you get a good firm area to strike, a strike zone more or less, to get the nails in, obviously that's going to help keep that down.
Along with the bead of sealant that they put on the bottom of it to seal up to the next shingle. Those are just some of the benefits of the GAF HDZ shingle. With us being a Master Elite contractor too, it puts us in the top three to 5%, which is fantastic.
Which is one of the big things that is attractive for us too, because of the benefits, not only for us, but for the benefits of that for our clients long-term. Yeah, 100% because it's backing, GAF is backing not only their product. When it becomes a Master Elite contractor like ourselves, they're actually backing the contractor.
So when we are putting on systems on the client's home, we are putting on a GAF system to where they are getting a long-term non-prorated system. That's a big deal, non-prorated. And people don't understand, everybody talks about their warranty.
My house has a 25-year warranty or whatever, but they don't understand what the proration piece of it means. Can you explain that a little bit too? Because that's a big deal. Yeah, for sure.
So non-proration dates, most shingle manufacturers, including GAF, if you're not a part of the program and can't offer extended warranties, will start prorating typically between about 18 and 24 months. So for instance, if you put on a $10,000 roof on your house, it's going to start prorating down to zero within a few years. With just kind of like a wear and tear type of scenario.
But if it's a manufacturer defect problem, GAF is going to handle it with the warranties that you guys are offering 100%. So a lot of times you'll catch a warranty and it'll be like, oh yes, it's a manufacturer defect. There's a problem with the shingle.
We're going to go ahead and take care of the labor and the product. But we're not going to take care of the removal of the dump fee. With these warranties that we're offering and that you guys get to offer with the client, it's covering bumper to bumper.
It's covering the tear off. It's covering any upgraded to make sure it's on code. It's covering all the materials, dump fees and permit fees.
So there's zero out of pockets if it deems that that shingle is caused by a manufacturer defect or needs to be replaced. That's huge. That's amazing.
Yeah, that's really huge. I've got actually a sample of these shingles here so that we can kind of show a visual of this thicker strike zone that you were talking about. And then the layer lock technology where I can't even peel these up.
I can't get the one shingle to separate from the one below it. So when you talk about high wind scenarios, hurricanes, tornadoes, things like that, I mean, I'm pulling as hard as I can and I can't get these apart. So you really shouldn't have any problem with uplift from those high winds.
I mean, it's a really solid product. They look beautiful. That's actually another piece of it is how good they look on the house.
You see shingled roofs sometimes and they're all ripply and wavy looking. And man, we put these on our homes and they look so beautiful when you look at the roof. If you can say a roof looks beautiful, but yeah, I mean, it looks really good.
It does. It's a big piece of the finished look and the curb appeal of a home. It is, absolutely.
And a lot of times people don't know it, but they know something's not right. You know, I mean, they can't tell why, but they know the difference between a good looking roof and a roof that does not look good. They just don't understand what they're seeing.
Yeah. One thing when you find out about that and you mentioned the cosmetic part of it, right? And what looks good and what doesn't. A lot of times it could be either two things.
It could be a bad insole. It could be some bad framing. And it could also be because the materials on the bottom that were used to put up before the roof went on was bad.
And that's why some of the greatest things is, is the partnership that we have with the builder and the roofing contractor is to go over those details to make sure that doesn't happen. One of the biggest mistakes that I find, that I've found over the last three to five years is that the SWR. So the peel and stick, the secondary water barrier, this is a five names ward, ice and water shield.
It's code to make sure it goes into valleys and around penetrations. We also have a starter strip that can be a peel and stick starter strip around the eaves and the rakes. But a lot of people like to get an insurance credit and I always encourage people to talk to their insurance agent to see what that credit entitles and how much it is or is not.
But with that, the full peel and stick on a home, as long as you don't have spray foam insulation, it is a great product. The problem with the spray foam insulation is that it's a good product, but it's doing a couple of things to the home. It's A, in a way, possibly suffocating the house, especially if you use closed cell insulation.
Most builders nowadays don't use closed cell, they use open cell spray foam insulation to let the home breathe because the home's got to breathe, right? Yeah. But that's where that common mistake goes back to. I've seen a lot of people use the closed spray foam and then put peel and stick on, and what I call it is I call it mole runs.
So it looks like a rat doing lines down it because it's trying to breathe and it like bubbles up the underlayment or the peel and stick and the shingle. Yeah. So it's always good when trying to find a builder, right? Or buying a house is that you're teaming up with good people that are taking those things into consideration.
I always kind of like to go back to, you know, not to talk politics, but I heard something about Donald Trump one time and it was like, you know, he was saying, well, we shouldn't build this because the birds always poop on it. So, you know, when you get a mind like that to say you're not building things and you're worried about the window washers down the road or what the birds are going to do to something, it's putting the detail into it just like putting the detail into a home to make sure that the homeowner is getting the best of the value. And that's really been our philosophy with developing Tracewater Homes from the get-go is that exact thing where we're thinking long-term.
We're not thinking about, you know, what does it take to get this house done as quickly and as cost-effective as we can. We're thinking about what does it take to build a home that we're going to be proud of, you know, 30, 40, 50 years from now that's still a value for the second, third, fourth homeowner. Absolutely.
And to your point on the insulation, that's one of the huge things about working with a master elite contractor such as yourself is that we've been able to talk and figure out what's going to work best for this product on our homes. So we build all of our homes with blown-in fiberglass when we're using shingles because of the problems that you mentioned with using spray foam and shingles. So we made that change, you know, in order to accommodate the product that we really wanted to use.
We make sure that all of our vented soffits meet the requirements of GAF so we're not voiding their warranty. You have to have so many square inches of vent. And so I was able to confirm with LP SmartSide, our previous guest, that their vented soffit product does meet that requirement.
And so by putting all of those pieces together, now we're able to put something in place that's really solid and is going to stand up, like you said, over time versus just going in and haphazardly doing something, you know, and then dealing with the problems later. Right. We've planned this all out ahead of time to make sure that we're giving our clients the best product that we can.
Well, and I think you mentioned insurance also, and that was a big piece of our development process as well, was we were seeing the problems, you know, us being based in Florida, you know, we were seeing the problems in the insurance industry and getting these homes insured, you know, after the fact. And so by developing a system that, you know, is very durable, and we thought through that process, we now have homes that the insurance companies like to insure because of the fact that they know downfield, they're not going to have those issues. They're structurally sound.
They're, you know, we have the roof warranties. We have the, you know, the framing. Everything is a system together designed for that purpose.
Yeah, absolutely. And on that warranty, TJ, would you mind talking a little bit about the Golden Pledge warranty and, you know, the different components that go into that and the fact that you're Master Elite certified and that allows, you know, you to offer that warranty and allows us to offer that warranty to our clients. Yeah, so absolutely.
So the Master Elite program allows us to sell the Golden Pledge warranty. That Golden Pledge warranty, the benefits of that, it's a 50-year non-prorated warranty. I tell everybody this because I don't like to do the smoke and mirrors.
It's never going to last 50 years with wear and tear. So for the lifetime of the shingle, it's definitely got a zero proration date in it. It also has a 25-year algae protection that we were talking about, those algae cover minerals.
Which is a big deal in our market because, I mean, you see it everywhere. You start looking around, you're going to see it. A hundred percent.
And then it also has a 15-year wind proven warranty. Nice. And the 15-year wind proven warranty, even in a named storm, GAF could be on the hook to replace your roof and not have to get your insurance involved.
That's amazing. I mean, we can't express enough what a big deal that is, especially living where we live and building where we build. It's a big deal.
Yeah, yes. The almost final component of that is it's 100% transferable one time. You sell it, hand it down, or give it away.
The buyer, even though we're putting the roof on for you guys, the first owner is the owner of that transferable warranty. So if they keep the home seven to nine years, three to five, maybe it's a lifetime. But if they choose to sell it down the road, which the average homeowner, from my understanding from statistics, is about seven to nine years.
They can transfer that off to somebody else and it's a free transfer. I mean, that brings up two things. One, we always talk about overall cost of ownership, which we will talk about every time we're talking about this stuff.
And right there, I mean, that's a big deal. And two, just making the house attractive to consumers long-term. So like you said, that second buyer now gets that warranty and that is not something that's going to happen on pretty much any other product out there.
Yeah, no, absolutely not. And I agree. One thing is that the HDZ with the Timberline GAF shingle is that this is the next generation.
There was just the HD prior to that. I put the HD on my house in Panama City Beach during four days before Hurricane Michael in 2018 and it didn't go anywhere. Wow.
I mean, that's a testament because anybody that experienced Hurricane Michael knows that it was like sheer devastation. And I mean, so to say that is huge. And even homes that we were putting on prior within the year or two before Hurricane Michael.
And I don't have the picture and I wish I did, I've continued to look for it. But it was a duplex with two different roofs and one side had the GAF and another side had a different product. And literally most of that product was on the ground or somewhere else and the GAF and it was like six or seven months before Hurricane Michael.
It did not move. That's amazing. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, talk about the ultimate test for wind resistance. That was it.
Yeah. Especially with Hurricane Michael being, some are still saying a four, but there's a lot of statistics out there that say it definitely was a category five. Right.
Yeah. Yeah. And I think also just a huge testament for anybody watching that, I mean, the owner of the roofing company and one of the owners of Trace Water Homes, I also have HDZ on my own home.
So, I mean, this is stuff that we're putting on our homes where our families live. So, it's not like we're just trying to sell something. We truly believe in these products so much so that we trust them to protect our own homes.
Yes, absolutely. A hundred percent. And that's, I think is again, important too, not to talk about other builders or big track builders that are out there that are doing hundreds and thousands and all over the country.
Yeah. But they're looking at it, they're on the stock market and they're driving a profit, right? And they're not putting all the details into it. Unfortunately, sometimes as a builder, such as you guys, that there is a lot of builders of your guys' caliber that are out there and say, look, we do a lot of homes a year, but we're not building five communities within 50 miles and just putting them up in two weeks.
You know, we're putting the subs in there and we're going over the products and we're doing everything that we can to make sure that we are putting a value home together on whatever that budget may be able to. Yeah. Thank you for coming back around to that because you mentioned that earlier with not being on the stock market and how that changes your mentality about how you do business.
You know, it really does because you're not focused on the next quarter or hitting certain numbers. You're really focused on putting out a product that's going to last the test of time because that's what you have. You know, that's really what it's all about.
Yeah. 100%. And on the roofing too, we talked about the GAF and being a Master Elite contractor.
We also have other certifications behind our belt, which is great. Whatever the... I know we do some homes with you guys with metal products. That'll be next.
And then final with GAF too, not only is the GAF HDZ there, again, it was the kind of the workhorse of it, but we have designer shingles and it comes and it's backed by the same warranties. So if a client's looking to upgrade to more of a designer look, we do have some other lines that are in there, some Camelot lines and some other different things that look like slate that can also get backed by the exact same warranties on the longevity of it. Nice.
That's great to know. And we'll probably utilize that more on the custom side of things. But as we mentioned in the episode with LP, that's not to say that we won't add some of these things to some of our elevation choices downfield.
If we decide that one of those products would look really good on some of our trace water helms, we're certainly open to innovation and adapting and things like that. So good to know that we have some other options that we can offer people downfield too. Yeah.
And I guess speaking of options. So Timberline HDZ is the included product on all of our homes. We've got a variety of colors that match or coordinate with the different paint color packages that clients can select from.
And then all of our clients have the option to upgrade from shingles to a metal roof. So we offer the ribbed Galvalume. So would you mind talking a little bit about some of the benefits of Galvalume? I mean, obviously it looks different.
And so from an aesthetic standpoint, there's a reason for people to want to upgrade. But other benefits and warranty that goes along with that product. Sure.
Absolutely. You know, that's the biggest question I get a lot of times when I'm talking to somebody about whether it's shingles or metal too, is like, well, what would you put on your house? Or what do you prefer? And, you know, I tell them that they both have great benefits and I'm not living in the house. So I want you to do what's benefit for you, what you think is.
Your GAF and shingles, great product. We have suppliers with metal, fantastic product. We're looking at the uplifts on them are fantastic.
You're looking at a 40 year manufacturer's warranty on some of the metal products. We're looking at Galvalume. You're looking at about a 20 to 25 year manufacturer's warranty.
But there's different options as well as that with the screw down roofs. It's Energy Star rated. So that can definitely help some of the power bill.
Even some of the power companies will give a one time rebate back. Max is out. It's changed over the years.
Sometimes it's 300 to 400 to 500. It's all based on square footage. And that program comes just like any other program.
It comes and goes. And they just kind of filter more money into it. But it's something to definitely reach out to the power company.
But I think the key to that point is that it's recognized as a product that helps increase energy efficiency. 100%. You know, that's a downfall.
I suppose if we're talking about shingles, they do make an Energy Star shingle. But with the cost that you put into an Energy Star shingle, it makes it in the one or two colors. And you could simply bump up to a metal product for possibly even less than what you would be buying the shingle for.
It's made out of asphalt, so there's not too much of a energy efficient inside of it. Sure, sure. That makes sense.
Yep, absolutely. Go ahead. Oh, I was just going to say, do you want to get into, you know, any of the reasons that we chose GAF in the first place? I mean, I know we've covered a lot of the benefits.
Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I've been in this industry. I hate to even say how many years, but I was like 13 and I was working for a guy helping re-roof houses.
So I've been doing it a long, long time and I've used pretty much every brand. I think you mentioned Elk. That was one brand that was really popular for a while and we put a lot of those down.
And so, you know, very familiar with a lot of different brands of shingle. And I would say GAF, you know, once we started using their product, it kind of became a game changer for us just because of a lot of the things you talked about. And for me, it's, you know, the ease of getting the product and the fact that they stand behind the product so well.
And additionally, it's, I said it before, it's the look. I mean, you just, you look at it on the roof and it just looks so good every time. And I'm always proud, you know, when a roof is done, I'm always proud to look at that and say, yeah, that's one of our homes.
Absolutely, absolutely. One of the things you guys brought up to me too, when we sat around and had a few meetings, obviously an interview to help your guys' clients as the roofing side of things, the kind of pivoting back to the metal a little bit is you guys asked on why we do battens and why we do one by four batten strips. And over time, what we have found, and I feel like we as King's Roofing and stuff has been ahead of that game for a long time, is that people will go straight to deck.
Now there's some things out there with like the fortified roofing that we could talk about all day to get fortified certifications that don't necessarily allow you to have battens on it because they want it straight to deck. But with the codes nowadays, the plywood's also at least got to be five eighths or greater. And there's a lot of homes out there that are half inch, that are re-roofs or whatnot, doesn't really apply here.
But you get that expansion and contraction. You're going to get that with anything, and especially with a metal roof that's got screws in it. And you want what I call back to a good piece of meat.
So that's why even on the new construction, most of the time, unless something else calls for it, we run one by four batten strips as well. So then those screws are getting a good tight grip on it. People that don't sell metal roofs, people that don't know how to install metal roofs, or people that just don't know how to sell a metal roof, they attack the screws.
That's the first thing they attack because they're like, oh, it's junk. It's not going to work for you. The screws are going to back out.
Well, the reason why the screws are backing out is because the fact that it doesn't have a good piece of meat on it to grab a hold of it. The 5-8s decking obviously is fantastic, a lot thicker than the half inch or the sizes that have come previous to that. But you're still now getting that extra security more or less by putting those battens down and putting those screws in and getting that tight, firm grip from the screws to the metal.
Nice. Well, on that point, we do use 5-8s decking on everything. And we had LP on here earlier talking about their products and LP WeatherLogic.
And so our roof sheathing is 5-8s WeatherLogic. And so the seams get taped and you've already got that water barrier. But then you guys also put down another water barrier on top of that, correct? Correct.
So in exchange of the full peel and stick, which the taping of the seams because you're still sealing things up would fall into that SWR credits, we put underlayment down, a breathable underlayment. So that's huge. I mean, we've got multiple layers of water protection, obviously the primary being the shingle.
And then you've got the underlayment and then the tape joints on the LP WeatherLogic and just really trying to create that solid envelope that's going to resist the weather that we have in our area and really all over the country. I mean, we talked about it not too long ago. Wherever we end up building, we will build the same way because it's not just hurricanes.
If it's not hurricanes, it's tornadoes. If it's not tornadoes, it's hailstorms. There's inclement weather all over the place.
And the products that we're using can withstand that regardless of where we build. I always say when you're saying that the exterior of the home is obviously very important, right? Yes. The roof is one of the most important things.
I go all the time to folks and no offense to anybody, but they like to put the roof on the back burner. I love this house. I need those countertops.
I need that elevator. I need this. I need that.
And I'm always like, but you want them and that's great to have. You need the roof. You want the elevator.
You want the marble. You want whatever it is you want inside the house because you're seeing it every day. You're smelling it.
You're touching it. You're getting some kind of joy out of it because it's inside the home around it. But everything that's protecting that is the roof.
So we can't skimp on the roof. And I find so many people that are like, well, just put a couple thousand dollars up there because it's more important that I have this because I'm cooking dinner every day. I understand.
But when that roof comes off and the insurance companies look at it as well, they look at it as that if you can have a solid roof, most of their claims are coming because of water intrusion. So water intrusion is either coming from flooding or from a storm that's blowing the top off. Not saying the windows can't come out and stuff, but the water intrusion is what creates most of the mitigation work into a home.
And these homes with GAF and these metal products that are on there protecting the house, yeah, you may have some siding fly off. You may have a window. You may have the garage door.
Something may go, but if the roof is still there, 90 plus percent of your property in the inside, A, is not causing you a headache because you have to make the phone call to your insurance company. And B, it's just the peace of mind knowing that your family and everything inside that house is protected because of what's on the top of the roof. Absolutely.
Yeah, for sure. And while some of the builders that you work with, you know, may only use Timberline HDZ, you know, like I said, we talked with LP earlier. And so you mentioned, a piece of siding might come off.
Ours shouldn't. That's a really good thing, is that we've coupled the HDZ shingles with LP SmartSide, which is 200 mile an hour wind rated and the impact windows. And then you throw the steel framing on there that we'll talk about later, you know, in another episode.
And you just, you really start to have this super solid envelope where you don't have to worry about storms because we've taken all of the good products that other builders might use one or two of and put them all together into one. Precisely. Yep, exactly.
And it does. It all starts from protecting the home from the outside, which the roof is obviously the top piece of that. So that's why, you know, we're so bent on making sure that we're doing that.
Yeah. I've done walkthroughs on your guys' homes and products and with the subs, obviously that a joint effort, you can see that it's a quality home and we were talking about earlier, you know, you don't have to worry about the stock market because it's just worrying about what the customer experience is and then ultimately how that house is performing long-term. And we're right here at 2,500 feet off the saltwater.
Even if you're inland, you know, another 5,000 feet, it's still, we're still in a dangerous area from mother nature and other things that can create it to disrupt the environment inside our home or outside of our home. Absolutely. Well, do you have any final thoughts? I don't.
You know, I'd like to thank TJ for being here today and sharing all your knowledge and expertise, you know, with our viewers. And so thank you very much. Yeah, absolutely.
Anything that I missed? No, I think we covered it. Obviously the products are good. The warranties are great.
There's always upgrades. If somebody's got into the budget that they want to look at too, we could sit here and talk roofing all day. We can talk about the solar shingle, which is a whole nother ball game.
Some people love solar products and solar don't, but there's just so many options out there as we as a building community continue to grow. And it's good that it's not going backwards in a way to say, keep driving the price down. It's building a quality product at a fair price.
Absolutely. Well, thank you again for joining us. Everybody, TJ with King's Roofing.
For more information on GAF Timberline shingles, you can visit tracewaterhomesfl.com under the featured building products tab. We have a link to their website where you can get all the information that you'd ever need. Thanks for tuning in and we'll see you next time.