Almost 29 years ago we had a kitchen extension built with classic asphalt roof construction and it's now that time...again! to have it repaired.
This time, the need for a radical repair was prompted by some of the kitched ceiling plaster board collapsing one morning just before Christmas last year when the weight of the sodden rock wool insulation had become too much for the sodden plasterboard to bear.
The need for immediate repair seemed rather urgent until we got an overpriced quote from a local roofing firm whereupon we realised it could wait till roofing firms had stopped pricing themselves out of the stratospheric prices they were using to moderate the seasonal peak demand on their services.
That first quote of £1782.00 +VAT (green mineral torch on felt!!!) with an additional £726.00 + VAT for the fibreglass (GRP) option was a little bit skewed by my asking about increasing the slope of the fall, thus guaranteeing the extra costs of reboarding and new timbers that were included in the quote.
I now realise that there's absolutely no need to increase the fall when proper materials are competently applied (the modest amount of pooling was largely the result of the way the asphalt layers had been overlapped on the gutter edge of the roof, raising a lip preventing complete drainage into the gutter.
With my new found awareness I was able to ask a couple of roofing firms in the past couple of weeks to provide quotes. The first of these, about a fortnight ago produced a much more reasonable quote of £1060.00 (VAT inclusive) for an epdm rubber roof, considerably cheaper than that very first winter time quote of £3009.60 for a GRP roof.
The second of the two recent quotes was for a mere £767.00 for a GRP roof (laminate with 2 x 1.5 fibreglass, whatever that means), cheaper yet again! In fact just over one quarter of the winter season price we had been quoted.
As a result, I've been googling for more information in regard of GRP roofing repairs and I'm not really any the wiser as to the pros and cons of each system (epdm rubber or GRP)
The timeline is a bit hazy but I guess about 14 or 15 years back the leaks had become so problematical it just had to be properly repaired. At that time, I was able to rope my SiL (who had served time as a roofing apprentice) into helping me repair the roof.
When we lifted off the rotten cheap 'n' nasty chipboard used by the original building contractors, I _insisted_ on replacing the s**te with decent marine grade plywood sheeting (a decision that, at this stage, seems to have paid off).
It's now apparent that my biggest mistake on that first repair was on failing to insist on NOT using asphalt and bitumen as the weatherproof 'membrane' materials, a mistake I intend to most vigourously rectify _this_ time round.
My research efforts have led me to consider epdm rubber as the best solution which, in 20/20 hindsight, I can't believe I hadn't insisted upon the first time round - I guess it was considered to be too "avante garde" at the time and my SiL felt more comfortable with the traditional asphalting technique he'd grown up with).
As I mentioned, I have a choice between epdm rubber and GRP and I can't decide what the pros and cons are. I'm hoping to get some more considered opinions from the regulars in this DIY newsgroup before I make any further decisions on this matter.
The costs are obviously important but I'm prepared to go for a more expensive option to avoid savings based on false economy.