Choosing The Right Snow Guard Types

Each roof snow retention project requires specific attention to material choices and proper system styles

The experts at RMSG explain the differences between various Snow Guard materials like copper, aluminum and raw steel for roof snow retention applications.

At Rocky Mountain Snow Guards, we manufacture a variety of Snow Guard Types as well as snow fences, such as aluminum, stainless steel and copper. We do this because the rooftop environment is a tough place for steel products. All winter long, ice and snow are working up against snow fences and snow guards eroding the finish. During the summer months snow guards and snow fences are exposed to high temperatures and bright sunlight including harmful UV rays. Once the steel on a snow guard is exposed, it will rust. The rust is unsightly on the snow guard itself but the rust will stain the roofing product underneath. This is particularly true of metal shingle and metal standing seam roofs, but rust will also stain other materials including synthetic slate and shake, natural slate, asphalt shingles and tile roofs.

While we offer powder coating as an option on all of our snow fence and snow guard products, it is not necessary to coat our products to guard against rust. We chose aluminum, stainless steel and copper because our mission is to provide layouts and designs that will not only perform well, but will perform beautifully. Our products actually enhance high end roofs.

Rocky Mountain Snow Guards does offer a couple of steel snow guard products intended for rusty corrugated metal roofs that are popular in resorts throughout the west. These snow guards are our CorGard snow guard, and our Drift I Corrugated and Drift II Corrugated Fence-Style Snow Guard Systems.