Metal roofing · Sydney
Garage and Carport Roof Replacement in Sydney
Garages and carports, attached or standalone. Where the garage roof meets the house is the part that has to be right.
- Trade
- Certificate III roof plumber
- Work
- Re-roofs, new roofs, guttering
- Material
- Metal only. No tile.
- Area
- Sydney, west prioritised
What is included
What you are actually buying
Detached and attached
A freestanding garage and one built against the house are different jobs, and the second one is the harder of the two.
The wall junction detailed
Where a garage roof meets the house wall it needs a proper apron flashing, not a bead of silicone.
Carports and lean-tos
Low pitch structures where the profile choice actually matters, because a standard sheet at a shallow pitch will not stay watertight.
Framing checked
Garage roofs are often lightly framed and have carried a leak for years. The frame gets assessed before the sheets are quoted.
Not included, deliberately
We work in metal only. No tile restoration, repointing or roof painting, no internal ceiling repairs, and no small leak chasing as a service. Job size is not a limit either way: there is no lower cut-off, and the crew scales up to roofs of around a thousand square metres.
How it works
From the first phone call to the clean up
Look at the pitch first
A lot of garage and carport roofs are shallower than they look, and pitch decides which profile can legally go on.
Check where it meets the house
On an attached garage this is where the leak almost always is, and it is the part a cheap quote leaves out.
Old sheeting off, frame assessed
Timber checked for rot, steel checked for rust, and anything failed replaced rather than sheeted over.
New sheet in a suitable profile
Fixed to the correct pattern, with the fall set so water leaves the structure rather than pooling on it.
Apron, barge and gutter
The edges and the wall junction done properly, which is what makes the difference between a roof and a lid.
The detail
What you should know before you commit
Garage roofs get replaced for one of two reasons. Either the sheeting has finally rusted through, or the roof has been leaking against the house wall for years and somebody has finally traced it.
The second one is more common than people expect, and it is why an attached garage is a more careful job than a detached one.
The junction with the house is the job
On an attached garage or a lean-to, the roof runs into a wall. That junction needs an apron flashing that is turned into the wall or under the cladding, so water coming down the wall is directed onto the roof rather than behind it.
The failure we see most often is that junction sealed with silicone instead of flashed. Silicone works for about two summers and then it splits, and by the time anyone notices, the wall framing has been wet for a while.
If your garage leaks near the house wall and the sheets look fine, this is almost certainly why.
Pitch decides the profile
Garage and carport roofs are often much shallower than a house roof, and pitch is not a style question.
Every sheet profile has a minimum pitch it is rated to, and below that figure water tracks back up the laps under wind. A standard corrugated sheet at a very shallow pitch will leak regardless of how carefully it is screwed down.
Shallow pitch
Needs a profile with deeper ribs and fewer laps, or a concealed fix panel. It is not a corrugated job.
Normal pitch
Corrugated or a wide-rib profile, chosen to match the house roof if that matters to you.
Very long runs
A single length from ridge to gutter avoids an end lap entirely, which is worth doing wherever the run allows it.
Existing structure
The frame was built for the old sheeting. A heavier profile is not automatically an upgrade if the purlin spacing does not suit it.
Doing it with the house roof
If the house is being re-roofed, doing the garage at the same time is materially cheaper. The access is already set up, the material is already ordered, and the colour actually matches.
The mismatched-garage look on a Sydney street is nearly always the result of the two being done years apart, in colours that were current at different times.
Want this priced for your roof rather than in general?
What happens to what is inside
A garage roof comes off from above, and for the hours it is open, everything underneath is exposed to whatever the weather is doing and to a certain amount of debris.
Most garages are full. Clearing a path and covering what cannot be moved is a five minute conversation before the job that saves an argument during it.
Move the car out
Obvious, and worth saying because people forget on the second day.
Cover the rest
Old sheeting drops rust, dust and screws. Anything you care about wants a sheet over it or wants moving.
The roller door
Door tracks are fixed to the frame. If the frame is being repaired at the top, the door may need releasing and resetting, and that gets flagged at quoting rather than discovered.
Power and storage above
Lights, openers and mezzanine storage fixed to the rafters all have to be worked around, so it is worth pointing them out on the site visit.
Common questions
Garage roofs: common questions
My garage leaks where it meets the house. Is that the roof?
Usually it is the apron flashing at that junction rather than the sheets. If it has been sealed with silicone rather than flashed properly, that is the most likely cause.
Can you match the garage roof to the house roof?
In profile and colour, generally yes. An exact match to a roof that has been on for twenty years is harder, because the colour has weathered.
Do carports need a different profile?
Often, yes. Carports tend to be shallow, and every profile has a minimum pitch it is rated to. Below that, water tracks back up the laps.
Is it cheaper to do the garage with the house?
Considerably. The access is already up, the material is one order, and the colours match because they are from the same batch.
Other services
The rest of what we do
Full re-roof
We take the old roof off and put a new metal one on. While it is open we check the timber underneath and replace anything that has rotted.
Shed roofs
Sheds, workshops and outbuildings. Usually a one or two day job, and usually well overdue.
New roofs
A brand new roof on an extension, a rebuild or a new house. We start at the bare frame and finish the lot.
Next step
Get your roof measured properly
On the roof where we can get to it, off satellite imagery where access is awkward. You get a figure for your roof, not a rate applied to a guess.