Cement Shingles

In roofing tile, a cement concrete system is perfect for homes located in areas that face severe winter weather. Extreme temperatures often damage roofs made with asphalt shingles causing expensive repairs, whereas roofing cement shingles hold up under tough weather conditions, such as the freeze/thaw cycle, fires, earthquakes, rain, hail, and even winds up to one hundred and twenty miles per hour. Because they are so resilient, a minimum warrant of fifty years is what most manufacturers offer on roofing cement shingles or cement roof panels. A couple of the other types of cement shingles include cement asbestos roofing shingles, asbestos cement roof decking, asbestos cement shingles, and lifetime cement shingles. With cement roof, tile installation, if you have wondered why roofing cement is flexible, it is because it has to expand and contract due to the heat and cold. If there is a leak or damage to your cement roof, there is roof cement and roof patch cement available to fix it temporarily.

Cement shingles or cement roof tiles are primarily composed of sand, cement, and pigments, which they call extruded concrete. Passing through rollers using high pressure, the extruded concrete exits this process as a concrete ribbon. They place this into molds to cure, which is a short process. Cement roof tile comes in a large array of styles and colors such as pinks, whites, earth tones, and grey and appropriate for any architectural preference or area. For coloring the cement roof tile, manufacturing companies apply either a ‘slurry coating’ or the ‘color through’ process, using metallic oxide pigments, to color the roof cement tiles. They make slurry coated cement shingles by bonding a non-colored base together with a colored top layer made of concrete. They use the slurry coating tiles in warmer regions such as Florida. In the ‘color through’ process, they add the metallic oxide pigments and then mix them through the concrete. With this process, the pigment goes right through the entire tile.

Used mainly for siding, they also use fiber cement shingles on roofs. Invented over one hundred years ago, they are composed of cement, water, additives, finely ground sand, and wood fibers. It is fairly maintenance free and resists wind, water, insects and fire, when hardened. Fiber cement shingles come in a bottom edge that is wavy, straight, or notched. They have the texture of wood and last up to fifty years.