Building the metal roof retrofit industry

By Emma Peterson. 

How Roof Hugger introduced retrofit roofing as an alternative to metal tear offs and coatings. 

Founded 35 years ago, Roof Hugger has made a name for themselves fabricating metal retrofit solutions. To learn more about the story of how this innovative company came to be, Heidi J. Ellsworth sat down with Roof Hugger president Dale Nelson for an episode of Roofing Road Trips®. 

The story of Roof Hugger begins in 1991 with Dale and his partner Red McConnohie. Dale recalled:  

Red had this idea that we could make some kind of bracket that, when installed, would allow you to put a new metal roof over the old one. So, we came up with the concept of this Z shape with little notches in it that matched the configuration of the old roof. And it allowed us to put new metal panels right on top of the old one.  

Once the concept was proven (which Dale and Red did by testing it on one of Red’s own properties), they brought in Terry Wolfe to help them make sure they were engineering everything in the best way possible. Dale shared, “We were fortunate early on to have very good engineering guidance from Terry. He was incredibly helpful in getting us to understand metal panel design, which we had to understand fully so that we could design our retrofit assembly accordingly.” 

This may appear to be a lot of work and fuss for one product, but the Z clamp that the Roof Hugger team created was more than just another product, it was a revolutionary innovation. Dale explained, “Traditionally, there were two ways to repair or replace an old metal roof – tearing it off or coating it. And both methods have their downsides. Tear offs are often very wasteful and time consuming while coatings struggled to address deep structural problems. What we did with Roof Hugger was create a third option – retrofitting. There wasn’t really a retrofit industry before us.” 

Listen to the podcast or Watch the recording to learn more about how Roof Hugger’s metal retrofit solutions work.