Free (or pretty cheap) steel roofing from 55 gal. drums

This guy demonstrates a pretty simple set of procedures for making steel-sheet roofing from 55-gallon steel drums. He uses the sheets he’s made for a roof on a shed addition to an existing building from reclaimed materials.

The roof-rafter arrangement and roof pitch in his project are more suited to rain country than snow country, though the sheet roofing could still be used in snow country.

I thought his use of the drum sheet metal was quite interesting. But I'll also mention the vid I’ve put embedded this post is one of a 7-Part how-to about building his 8’x8’ shed. He says he built the whole shed nearly free.

55 Gallon Drums are not free around here. If you can find them for sale, they are between $15 and $25 each. You can sometimes find plastic ones for $10, but that won't work very well for roofing a shed.

Wyatt Brush wrote:55 Gallon Drums are not free around here. If you can find them for sale, they are between $15 and $25 each. You can sometimes find plastic ones for $10, but that won't work very well for roofing a shed.

That's about what they go for around me too. Any free metal is generally scooped up by the scrappers pretty quickly. Based on the dimensions of a 55 gallon drum, when flattened you end up with about 16.5 square feet of roofing, or 90 cents a square foot based on a $15 drum. My local big box home improvement store is selling 12 foot by 3 foot panels of metal roofing for $22.03. That works out to 61 cents a square foot for something that is ready to go.

John Wolfram wrote:

Wyatt Brush wrote:55 Gallon Drums are not free around here. If you can find them for sale, they are between $15 and $25 each. You can sometimes find plastic ones for $10, but that won't work very well for roofing a shed.

That's about what they go for around me too. Any free metal is generally scooped up by the scrappers pretty quickly. Based on the dimensions of a 55 gallon drum, when flattened you end up with about 16.5 square feet of roofing, or 90 cents a square foot based on a $15 drum. My local big box home improvement store is selling 12 foot by 3 foot panels of metal roofing for $22.03. That works out to 61 cents a square foot for something that is ready to go.

My Dad and I have gotten used metal roofing, just for the cost of tearing down old buildings that land owners want taken off of their property taxes. The downside of used roofing, is that it usually already has rust, and already has holes in it.
I have seen at least one building that was shingled with what looked like the tops and bottoms of barrels. The roof kind of looked like fish scales.