Malarkey shingles, installed / File 06
Why the shingle list is two long
Keys installs Atlas and Malarkey. Not eleven brands, not whatever the supplier has in the yard. Here is what that buys, and what it costs.
The claim nobody checks
Certification, and the arithmetic of it
Walk a street of roofing yard signs and read the badges. A great many companies advertise themselves as certified, approved, preferred or elite by three, four or five different manufacturers at once. Consider what that would actually require. Each programme has its own training, its own installation instructions, its own documentation, its own audit and its own renewal. A crew genuinely operating to five sets of specifications is a crew that has learned five different starter courses, five nailing patterns and five ventilation requirements.
Some companies do hold real credentials and take them seriously. But a wall of badges is close to self refuting, and it is trivially easy to print. The useful question at a kitchen table is not "are you certified", it is "show me the current certificate, and I will ring the manufacturer".
Where Keys stands on this
Keys Roofing claims no manufacturer certification, tier, accreditation or authorised dealer status, from Malarkey Roofing Products or from anyone else, and nothing on this site should be read as claiming one. Keys is an independent contractor that buys and installs these products. That is the beginning and the end of the relationship, and stating it plainly is cheaper than being asked about it later.
What a short list buys
Repetition, which is the whole trade
Roofing is a repetition business. A crew that lays the same product week after week stops thinking about the product and starts thinking about the roof. Specifically:
- One nailing pattern in the muscle memory. Fastener placement is the single most common installation failure in this trade. Different products place the nailing zone differently. A crew working from two instruction sheets rather than eleven makes that error less often.
- One starter and one hip and ridge product per system. These are separate manufactured items with their own specifications, and they are the items most often substituted with hand cut field shingle to save a few dollars a square.
- Known colour behaviour. Knowing how a blend actually looks on a north facing plane in February, rather than how it looks on a sample board in a warm office, is worth more to a homeowner than a wider catalogue.
- Supply that behaves. After a serious spring, availability decides schedules. A narrow list with known distribution is easier to keep honest about dates.
What it costs
The honest downside of a two brand shop
It loses work, and it should be said plainly rather than dressed up. If you have set your heart on a profile only another national manufacturer makes, Keys is the wrong contractor and will tell you so rather than talk you across. If your neighbourhood association mandates a particular product from a particular maker, same answer. If you are trying to match a discontinued colour from a competitor's line, a two brand shop cannot help you and a distributor's colour matching service is a better use of your afternoon.
There is a second cost, which is that a narrow list can look like a lack of options. It is not, quite: between two manufacturers there are laminate lines at several price points, a range of blends, and impact rated options published by the maker. But it is fewer options than a company that will fit anything, and if breadth is what you are buying then breadth is what you should buy.
The other name on the list
Atlas, briefly and factually
For completeness, since the other half of the list rarely gets a mention on a page named after the first half. Atlas is the second manufacturer Keys installs. It publishes its own laminate lines, its own impact rated products and its own algae resistance technology using granules licensed from a third party. Those are that manufacturer's published claims about its own products, on the same footing as everything attributed on this site, and the same advice applies: read the current literature and get the product line named on your contract.
Keys is not affiliated with, endorsed by or certified by either manufacturer. Which of the two goes on your house is a conversation about slope, exposure, colour, budget and what your neighbours' roofs did in the last two springs, and it is a conversation worth having on the roof rather than at a table. What has to end up in writing is here.