Peter Thompson

A terrible photo, taken today and slightly into the sun. I'm halfway across the roof now, and getting quite good at it.

I'm currently fitting Catnic Urban to our roof, which has a 5 degree fall. I have nothing to compare it with, and obvously can't comment on longevity. But the coating has a reassuring, appearance; as if it is lightly embossed with a pimpled roller, and seems very thick. The steel is much sturdier than I expected, and the panels click together very securely and look fantastic on the roof. Apart from the look, we were drawn to Catnic by the excellent sales service, with an online estimator, which includes delivery. Despite being in north-east Scotland, delivery was possible and a kit arrived, including every last item needed to fit the roof, for around £8500 before VAT. The only negative is that obtaining information about fitting it was tricky, although a training day in Wales is available. We struggled to find anyone locally who would fit it, but as advanced (in experience and years) self-builders we've found that getting the 8.5 metre panels on the roof has been the biggest challenge. I'll try to remember to get some images tomorrow.

This gives an idea of the style of the kit...the tiny car is for scale....I'vebeen kidding on that I'm building a giant garage.

I had a massive load of offcuts of the foam perimeter insulation for the screed. I had very few gaps in the insulation boards, but stuffed 10mm strips of the foam into all the obvious ones....the original definition of caulking. I'll look into liquid barrier, but the intumescent sealant seems to be ticking all the boxes and still gives me other options if I'm not happy with it.

Our supplier suggested that as we had to completely line our SIPs kit with PIR, once the joints had been foil-taped we would effectively have created a continuous VCL. I'm aware that there could be flaws in this approach, but we're doing it anyway. At wall and roof junctions it's tricky to tape properly using foil tape, and using a decent airtightness tape, especially one made for corners, would be incredibly expensive. As the PIR junctions are very neatly done (I used an insulation saw), I've experimented using Soudal Vapourseal from Toolstation. It's very slow to dry, but is supposed to be water and vapour impermeable and is economical and very easy to use. It's now out of stock and likely to be discontinued by them. Looking at intumescent sealant, it seems to be the same chemical formula...and is also an acrylic sealant that doesn't pass vapours. Are there any opinions on this, and has anyone used a similar product for vapour sealing.

Many of the questions that I have been searching for via the internet have brought me here; so I decided to register. We're building from a kit which has 150mm walls and a 175mm roof; hence we have to fit 40mm of PIR to the ceiling and 25mm to the walls in order to meet Scottish regs. The foundations started in August and we've been working on it since early September. We have ordered a Catnic, standing-seam roof kit, and plan to install that ourselves after being messed about by a specialist roofer. Having twice previously installed our own underfloor heating system, we've already installed the underfloor pipework and have Cemfloor self-levelling screed over 140mm PIR. We'll be having a 5kW, Ecodan ASHP, which has been generously donated by the Scottish Government. I'll try to upload images once I've collated them, and I'll update on progress.