My chicken coops have always had metal roofs, and now I'm trying out metal siding, on the grounds that I want anything I build to last 20 years without maintenance, and the exterior plywood I've been using doesn't deliver that.

People will tell you that metal siding sweats, because of condensation. This is true if the inside of the house is warmer than the outside, since moisture from the warm house will condense on the cold walls and ceiling. And it's true whether these are made of metal or not, though it's more visible with metal because it's 100% non-absorbent.

But you can dodge the problem with a fresh-air poultry house. If you add enough ventilation, the inside of the house is just as cold as the outside, and you get no condensation. My metal roofs don't have condensation unless there's snow on the roof and temperatures are above freezing. The rest of the time, the wide-open houses have dry ceilings and walls.

This is one of the main points of Fresh-Air Poultry Houses, the chicken-coop book I've republished (check out the sample chapter if you haven't already).

You can also prevent condensation with insulation, but I don't do that.

Back to the construction project. In keeping with my other rule of construction (never use a saw when you can buy stuff that's already the right size), I ignored my existing stock of 10-foot metal roofing and obtained some cheap 8-foot corrugated roofing from Home Depot. My chicken houses are 8x8 feet. Karen and I banged these sheets onto a couple of sides of a chicken house where the old OSB siding was falling off. We used roofing screws. These are hex drive screws with neoprene washers. We used to use roofing nails, but they pull loose too easily and we hate having roofing panels flapping loose in the breeze. And using power tools instead of a hammer keeps my shoulders and back from seizing up. I bang the screw in a short way with a hammer, then drive it home with a cordless drill.

These panels went on very quickly, and if they ever rust through (which they will, at the bottom edges anyway, if I allow chicken manure to pile up against them), I can take the screws out and replace them just as easily.

So far, so good. The shiny metal really brightens up the interior of the chicken house.

Plain old "ripple metal" (corrugated steel) is less rigid than V-channel roofing, and the house is no longer as stiff as it used to be. It may not be essential that a chicken house be as solid as a rock, but I like it that way. I plan to switch to the more expensive roofing on my next house to see what happens.