1. Color that never fades: The color of a clay tile is not a coating. It comes from the clay body itself and the firing process, so it cannot fade, chalk or wear off. A clay roof looks the same after thirty Texas summers as it did on the day it went on.

2. A ventilated roof surface: Barrel and S-profile tiles sit on battens with an air gap beneath them. That gap lets hot air move and vent out at the ridge instead of driving heat straight into your decking, which is a meaningful advantage in August.

3. Fifty to a hundred years of service: Fired clay does not decompose. Manufacturers commonly warrant the tile for fifty years or more, and functioning clay roofs well past a century are ordinary in older parts of the world.

4. Non-combustible: Clay is fired at high temperature and carries a Class A fire rating on its own merits, with no treatment required.

5. Nothing organic to attack: Insects, rot and mold have nothing to work with. Maintenance amounts to keeping valleys clear and replacing the occasional cracked tile.

Our Clay Tile Roofing Process

Clay tile installations succeed or fail on the layers you cannot see once the tile is down, so our sequence gives the underlayment and battens the attention they deserve.

1. Load and structure review: Clay runs between 600 and 1,200 pounds per square depending on profile. We confirm your framing can carry it, and where it cannot we set out what reinforcement would cost before you decide.

2. Profile and color selection: We walk you through barrel, mission, S-tile and flat profiles alongside your elevation and roof pitch, because the profile changes the shadow line of the whole house far more than most people expect.

3. High-temperature underlayment: Under a tile roof the underlayment is the actual waterproofing layer, and it lives in a hot, enclosed space. We specify high-temperature self-adhered membrane rather than standard felt, because the felt is what fails first on cheap tile installations.

4. Batten and counter-batten system: We install the batten grid that creates the ventilation gap and gives the tiles their fixing, set out for the exact exposure your tile and pitch require.

5. Tile setting and detailing: Tiles are laid, fixed and cut in to hips, valleys and rakes. Field cuts are made with proper wet saws so the edges stay clean, and we use the manufacturer’s matching trim pieces at ridges and hips.

6. Inspection, cleanup and spare stock: We inspect the finished roof, clear the site, and leave you matching spare tiles, because breakage repairs are trivial when you have the same batch on hand and awkward when you do not.