8
FEBRUARY 2016 PRO INSTALLER
PRO NEWS
www.proinstaller.co.uk
BEFORE
AFTER
SOLID ADVICE FOR
SOLID ROOFS
There is no denying that the solid roof market is gaining momentum, but is the growth as exponential as we would
have expected, or is something holding it back? Mark Schlotel, Head of Marketing at Synseal looks at the issue
of submitting a Building Regulation application and how suppliers can help to facilitate this mandatory process.
The demand for solid roofs
is increasing. The product
offers installers another way to upsell and add
value to their offering, but
also a reason to revisit
customers of previously
completed projects. With
more competition now on
the market, the cost to add
solid roofs to your portfolio is not prohibitive and
the installers we speak to
are amazed at how quick
and easy our own version
is to install. So with all
these benefits at our fingertips, why is there still a
level of uncertainty about
this potentially lucrative
market?
Some feedback we have gathered via our solid roof customer
training workshops is that installers are understandably wary
with regards to Building Regulations compliance, so many
would rather steer clear than get
it wrong. Admittedly this may
seem a rather grey area due to
some conflicting information
published in recent times and
may explain why of the 5,200+
companies in the UK actively
marketing conservatory roofs,
only around 830 of them had
purchased a solid roof according
to April 2015 research statistics
(source: Insight Data).
Back in May 2011, the LABC
published a Best Practice note
on application of Part L to Conservatories attached to existing
dwellings. This offered some
useful guidance: “There is no
indication as to the amount of
glazing that should exist for the
structure to be considered as a
conservatory. In the interest of
national consistency of interpretation, the guidance on levels of
glazing contained in the superseded Approved Document L1B
2006 still gives a valid basis for
a decision.”
In other words an “exempt
conservatory” should have at
least 50% of external wall area
formed from translucent materials (not including walls within
1 metre of boundary), have at
least 75% of roof area formed
from translucent materials, be at
ground level, and be effectively
thermally separated from the
main part of the dwelling.
At Synseal, we applauded the
LABC’s definition that 75% of the
conservatory roof must be glazed
with transluce