CBD's Copper Roof Cap Ordering Details Information Page

Lead Time?	Sizing & Design	Cap Fasteners?
Minimum Order?	Why Only 20oz Copper?	Our Contact Info?
What Info We Need?	Volume Discounts?	References?

What is Our Lead Time?
We strive to check for e-mail at least a couple times each day, and respond to those e-mail within 24 hours. So that process should go as swiftly as possible. We do have a toll free phone# listed on our Contact web page, but most often this does not help, as I am busy in the shop and not sitting at my computer when people seem to call, and I am not nearly as able to assist you in working out the details and provide you with a quote. That process often takes several hours to do the calculations if I have the right measurements, diagrams, and clear photos from you to work with.

In recent past we were not terribly booked out, but this Internet exposure has gotten us a lot of attention and we are likely to be booked out several weeks with projects before we could begin the actual fabrication of your project, after we had locked down all the details and received your deposit. We may even be booked out a few months, so be prepare to hear we will not be able to deliver your custom project in short order. We currently have no employees to speed up production, so it is simply on a first come - first serve basis. We insist on a half down deposit, so that you are locked in and cannot be shuffled over by a more lucrative offer.

We have no control of the shipping time, other than to charge you a lot more for 2 day, or over night shipment, which can cost more than the custom copper fabrication. Most of these ground shipments have not been taking more than a week, so it hardly seems worth the cost of moving such large projects a few days sooner. We have rarely had had a client who was willing to pay that much for Express Shipping.

You can get a better idea of what our current work schedule is by going to our Latest News page to find out our most current lead time listed.

If you are in a hurry; to expedite this process, some clients have sent in a $200 deposit, even before we were able to work out all the details, so that they are scheduled next on our list of projects. If you decided to do this, we will refund 100% of that deposit if for any reason you changed your mind and did not contract with us to do this work for you. We do still require the rest of the agreed payment of the item(s) before we begin fabrication, unless other arrangements were made. Click here for our contact and payment info.

Again, if this will not wait for the postal lag time, and or you need to make the payment with a credit card, we hear that it can be done smoothly through Western Union web site, or call: 1-800-CALL-CASH to expedite matters. We heard they do not accept American Express.

We have no control over the shipping time, other than having you pay extra for 2nd day, or over night Express delivery. We ship with FedEx Ground for small packages or Roadrunner/Dawes Trucking for large crates. Most of these ground shipments have been taking less than a week to reach the other side of the country.

What is Our Minimum Order?
Our minimum order is $200. This minimum charge does include all shipping and packaging cost. That should get you as much as 5 to 8 square feet of the 20oz copper we use, depending on the size and complication. We require full payment before we will begin fabrication, unless other arrangements are made.

Larger orders of over $500 will require only a half down to start. Then we will send you digital photos of the progress for your approval. Then we require the final payment before shipping the item(s) off to you. For orders over $2k we will be fine with only a 1/3 deposit. Then the second third after we have shown you we have started on your project. With the final payment after the project is finished. We will also weigh it to see how much copper actually went into your final project and adjust the final cost down accordingly if it took less copper than estimated. I am sure you will agree this is an ethical business practice that you would be hard pressed to find else where, but we have been doing that for our clients for over a decade now. You can read more of our thoughts on Ethical Responsibility at:

http://mind-temple.com/ethics.htm

What Information Will We Need?
Believe it or not, we would love to be able to get up on your roof and get the measurements for you. But in most cases that is simply not an option, so for a quote from us to make you a copper roof cap like you see on our web pages; we need to know the following information. If you are a clients that is able to do their 'home work' and get all the right info and have a good idea of just what they want, and are able to convey this in their first e-mail to us, you can qualify for a 10% discount reward:

(a) what style cap you want. If you did not find what you are looking for in the examples shown here, diagram your idea and scan it in to send it to us as a image file. we have a cable modem, so large file sizes are not a problem. Anything you can do to help convey your wishes will aid in getting just what you want from us, and we will better be able to quote you a price. Our primary goal is you provide you with your dream cap at a price you are happy with. See the below for ideas to help you work up a design and decide what size.

(b) how large. How wide do you want the roof cap to be across the base. Maybe a small 12" wide cap is all you need to seal the tip of the roof, but that may look a bit tiny on any roof over 8' wide. Here is a general suggestion for proper sizing of a cap for your roof: 1/8th scale of your roof size = a fairly small size cap, 1/6th scale = a medium cap, 1/4th scale = a larger cap. Of course the size will greatly affect the cost, but it is rare we are asked to make a cap that is less than 18" wide. Keep in mind that an 18" roof cap only overlaps the center tip by 9" on each side. From the ground that is going to look pretty small still. Our $200 minimum charge will usually get you an 18" to 20" wide cap including shipping, depending on the style you choose.

(c) the angle or pitch of your roof. Normally this is calculated in the inches rise per 1 foot straight over from the outer edge. Example: a 12/12 pitch is 12" up for every 12" in, which equals a 45 degree angle. To get this measurement: using a small level, set a 1' ruler level out from the roof and drop a tape measure straight down at the end of it. That number on the tape measure to the underside of the ruler will be the first number for your roof angle. The second number is always 12. This photo shows a client named Mr. Grace testing the roof angle that was suppose to be a 12/12 pitch. This one was correctly built, but it is plenty common for a contractor to tell you the pitch, but when tested it was found to be different. If we make the roof cap too steep, that is still workable, but if the roof is steeper than the cap, that can be a serious problem.

(d) your contact info to send the copper roof cap to: name, address, and phone number. The shippers prefer to have a business address to deliver it to, so there is a better chance to have a person there to receive it, but that is not a requirement. They will need your phone # to call you if there is a problem finding your address.

Cap Sizing & Designing:
Of course we are happy to build you a cap as large and as ornate as you wish, but we are plenty busy with orders. so we are not out to sell you a Porsche sports car, when all you need and want is a cute little Mini Cooper. Our focus is on you're satisfaction with the size, quality and price of our caps.

Temporary Roof Cap:
We understand that you may not have time to order one of our caps made custom for you, so if you are concerned about sealing the roof peak until the new roof cap arrives and is installed; have the roof shingled up near the top where the shingles begin to converge. Then use some roofing felt paper cut in a large circle. Without even cutting the roofing felt they can fold and overlap one side to the center point to form into a cone shape to make a temporary cap that overlaps the roofing shingles. Tape the fold together and tack it in place on the roof peak. It can also give you a better idea of what size cap would look best up there. This will relieve your pressure to make a hasty decision of what sort of roof cap would be best, a finial or weathervane added, and whom you should do business with.

Sizing:
If you are having any trouble visualizing what to ask us to fabricate in copper sheet metal for you, you are not alone. We get asked what size we advise quite often. As a general rule; you can take the width of the roof at the base. For example; if your roof is 12' wide, you can divide it by 6th to get a middle range size, or divide that 12' by 4 to get a large size cap. But if this is for a gazebo roof that is low to the ground, you can divided the 12' by 8 to get a cap that is on the small size.

If it were a gazebo roof, people commonly lean toward the medium to small size, depending on how ornate they are looking to go. On a turret roof for their house, people commonly lean towards medium to large range, since it is usually on a second story roof that will make the cap look that much smaller from the ground, where it will be seen most. We hope this helps you visualize.

To recap our sizing guides:

1/8th scale of your roof size = a small size roof cap
1/6th scale = a medium size roof cap
1/4th scale = a larger roof cap

You can consider any variant in size between these numbers it calculates to.

We wish we had more photos of caps in place on the roofs of our clients to show you, but even though many clients say they will send us a picture of their new cap after installation, it is rare that they follow through. And we are not the kind of company to pester clients for these pictures they had promised us.

This house happened to be near enough (150 miles away) for us to get these photos shown at the right. The roof caps shown here on the right are a medium sized to the roof below. Even though they seems over whelming there on the ground before installation, and the clients felt they were definitely not too large, as you see here.

To experiment with different sizes, a model of the roof may help a little, but it does not clearly represent how it will look from the ground of the real roof top. So to build a simple life-size model of a roof cap:

(a) Get some cardboard to cut up for a sample cap. To first get the dimensions for the cardboard; you can take a string and place it in a circle near the top of the roof where you think you would like the bottom edge of the cap to be. Write down the measurement from that string, up to the peak of the roof. Then Write down the measurement of the length of that string to make the circle. Divide the string length by the number of sides of your roof.
(b) Draw out one of these triangles on a sheet of paper and cut it out to use as a template to draw it on the cardboard. Tape those sections together in the shape of the cap, like shown in the photo to the right.
(c) For simplicity, you could just roll the cardboard together in one large cone shape taped or stapled together, and then cut the bottom edge off in a circle at the same distance from the center point.
(d) Set it on the roof top and step back to look at it and get an idea how one of our copper caps might look. You can then get a much better idea if you want it any larger or smaller, or other details like the angle or height.
(e) From there you will be better able to tell us what the dimension is of the cap you want us to make for you, so we can quickly quote you an exact price and fabricate it just the way you want.

Why Only 20oz Copper?

Sheet Metal Thickness?
Most sheet metal fabricators only work with the standard 16oz copper or a thinner 12oz copper, since as the standard in the industry, they are still able to claim it is solid copper and save costs from using a more expensive thicker copper. It is also a lot easier to cut, drill, and bend. For several years we also thought this 16oz copper was all that was available in stock at our local suppliers.

Now all our custom work in the last 2 year has been fabricated with the thicker 20oz solid copper sheet metal (since we had finally found a source for it). It was so rarely requested that we did not even know 20oz copper was available until early 2003. We feel that since the labor cost in any custom project like these is clearly the largest part of the cost, why not use the better material, since the cost difference would be less than 5% of the total cost? We stopped offering the thinner 16oz copper as a bargain option in 2004. We will gladly mail you a free scrap sample of the 20oz copper we use for a comparison.

The reason we use primarily copper sheet-metal, as opposed to other rust-free metals like aluminum or stainless steel is this:

The Look:
Copper is a metal that is meant to be seen, with it's attractive patina effect that darkens the copper to a calm soft dark brown look within a few months exposure to the elements. Where stainless-steel remains a shiny eye-sore.

Maintenance Free:
(a) Copper of course need not be painted, since it will nor rust or deteriorate with exposure to the elements. Resolving any stripping and repainting issue.
(b) Copper also need not be cleaned, since it does not mildew.
(c) Copper has also been known to aid in reducing moss and mildew growth on the roofing below.

Cost-v-Value:
(a) Copper is a better value to a high quality non-magnetic stainless steel, which is so expensive that it's sold in a much thinner sheet-metal as a standard. (Stainless-steel is such a hard metal that it has to be thinner to cut, drill, and bend, where copper is a softer more malleable metal, less prone to crack)
(b) There is no misleading you that most of the cost for this sort of custom work is the labor involved. There is no way we can begin to compete with the cost of mass-produced items coming out of China. So we spare no expense and use the best metal possible, short of sterling silver.

Note:
Other shops prefer stainless-steel over copper to save money since:
1. Stainless-steel is easier to assemble by just spot-welding it together for mass-production.
2. Stainless-steel can be easily handled without worry of finger prints tarnishing the metal strangely.
3. Stainless-steel is thinner, there fore being lighter for lower shipping costs.

We will work in stainless steel, but since copper cost about the same for thicker sheet-metal, our clients have preferred the solid 20oz copper we use in over 95% of the projects we make.

What about Volume Discounts
Yes, we will give volume discounts, but the most common discounts is to clients who aid us by carefully reading over these web pages and clearly convey their needs to us in the first e-mail when contacting us, in order to minimize the number of e-mails needed to iron these details out. If you have read this far, you are off to a good start. Feel free to mention this discount in your e-mail.

References
We have worked very hard to maintain a solid reputation for quality and reliability over the last decade. Go to our referral web page to read letters we have received about our work practices and the quality of our work.