SimonD

Re Tata Steel & Greencoat PLX - can attest to my recent experience of Tata Steel and a massive hike in price. However, my quotation went up over double just for the supply (and then not even with the fascia and guttering included) with Tata telling me I needed lots of special fabrication at what I thought were pretty extortionate rates. I didn't receive much in the way of reciprocal communication when I went back to tell them I confirmed all my details with one of their regional technical managers who confirmed I didn't need any special fabrication way back when.. communication was certainly not their strong point for me. I went with the Lindab Greencoat PLX although you can also buy the SSAB Greencoat PLX (the Greencoat coating and the steel are made by SSAB which is basically Swedish Steel) - same product but strangely seem to be available with slightly different RAL colours depending on which brand you go for. I installed the Greencoat PLX roof myself but first obstained some installation quotations. I received a range of prices between about 33k down to just under 10k for essentially the same job of aout 126sqm - confusing. I got all my materials for the Lindab Greencoat PLX version from The Metal Roof Company who couldn't have been more helpful. They put me in touch with a couple of other companies so I could hire the tools and machinery and get a proper materials estimate. If you're looking for a local installer, then the Metal Roofing company will usually put you in touch with properly qualified installers that they know and work with. Worth a phone call. Re Oil canning - having looked around at a lot of installations and also from the Lindab technical info on this roofing system some oil canning is a natural feature of this product. Having handled it myself I'm not surprise. I had pans that were 8m long that are basically formed from something like 0.7mm mild steel with a width of 600mm. The steel is naturally stressed when it goes through the forming machinery which does create a 'texture' along those bends. You can reduce oil canning and pillowing by reducing the width of the pans and also from careful forming. You then also have the natural tendency of the expansion and contraction of the metal through weather. Having a mat colour definitely helps to reduce its visibility and someone, probably one of the roofing people I spoke to along the way, suggested lighter colours also mask the oil canning effect a bit more, who knows. When I laid my longest pans onto my large curved roof area - approx 76sqm - there was some oil canning visible as the pans self curved. Much of this didn't show when I removed the shiny plastic cover but as we've been through the summer with very hot days, the material has pillowed a little bit and is more visible when the sun hits it at certain angles. Oil canning was was a big worry for me, especially because I've seen to pretty bad examples on roofs, cladding and fascias in our region, but now that I've seen it on my roof I'm okay with it because it adds some texture.

I've just installed a traditional standing seam roof on my build, but because I have 2 curved roof sections, I had to form, cut and fold the entire roof myself on site. The products like Bradclad are simpler. They need to be fully supported and use the hidden clip systems so you don't run the same risks as the typical profiled sheets you see on barns that have the exposed fasteners and rely on rubber seals on the exterior etc. These companies will provide you with pre-formed pans for the width and length of your roof and the will also provide all the flashings pre-folded too. The flashings, clips and brackets make up for a surprising amount of the materials. There's a couple of other companies out there that provide the preformed 'kit' type standing seam roof. Tata Steel's Colourcoat Urban is one ( I was going to use them but backed off when they massively hiked the price for me and trying to have an adult discussion with them didn't work). Metal Solutions, UK distributor for the SSAB Greencoat PLX Pro BT provide them in all manner of finishes from Zinc, to coated steel to coated aluminium. If you wanted to go down the more hands on traditional forming, I'd highly recommend talking to the Metal Roof Company (where I bought all my supplies from in the end) who will also get you in touch with a local metal roof specialist. The last prices I got for the pre-formed versions of this kind of roof were back in March: Greencoat PLX coated steel at 530mm centres was a little over £12 per linear meter ex VAT, but then you have to add costs for flashings which vary according to girth as they're cut from a 600mm wide steel coil. On top of this you'll also need sliding and fixed clips, installed at about 220mm centres around the verges, ridges and eaves and about 380mm centres across the rest of the roof (but this does depend of wind uplift forces for your roof). This obviously doesn't include installation costs either. Specifying this stuff isn't straight forwards! They work well with Velux and any other upstands across the roof. I think these roofs are gorgeous and worth the effort mind you. Hope this helps and do let me know if you'd like more details.

I've recently put an order in with Nordvest windows who don't seem to come up much on this forum. I found their approach to specifying and detailing the window order to be helpful and reassuring, plus they gave input into preferred design of the windows compared to our original standard all 'side hung' request. We've thus ended up with a mixture of top hung fully reversible, tilt and turn, side hung etc. depending on the room and its use. They were also one of only two suppliers where we didn't need to compromise on the window designs and door sizes. My impression is that Nordvest provide a lot of design flexibility in their products. They are all timber only 3g windows with whole window U-values around the 1 mark so not your ultra high performance Passivhaus 3g units but that would have been overkill for our purposes and it saved us a good amount of money compared to the 0.7-0.9 U-value type units. Colour wise, we've chosen a lighter grey RAL 7040 which matches the steel coated roof. I went to most of the usual suspects including Green Building Store, Norrsken, Nordan, Rationel, etc. plus some local companies and outliers like Spar Windows and Jeld-wen. I've ordered them on a supply only basis. Interestingly for me those companies that did provide installation quotes only included the labour, typically four men x a few days, but with many of our units over 100kg, one over 200kg and being fitted on the first floor together with a large steep earth banking in front of the house, there was no way they could do it without additional machinery, which was of course was not mentioned. I've been given a delivery date of week commencing 7th December so will be able to update soon, I hope ?

Hi, as a new member, I'm just introducing myself to the forum. I've done a bit of lurking on the forums on the odd occasion as threads have come up in search results for me over the last year or so and I finally thought it was time to actually join up. I've been building a house on my own. It's part renovation/conversion, part new build with a total area just over 200sqm. The renovation/conversion is 1920s brick & brick, and some brick & block, or shall I say what was actually left of it once we scratched beneath the surface of the structure - all soon to be covered in woodfibre EWI & lime render. The new build part is mostly timber frame but a bit of a hybrid with a substantial steel structure amongst the glulams. The timber frame is all filled in and wrapped in sheeps wool and to be finished off with timber cladding. It's all built as a fully breathable wall system. Roof is now on and I've just ordered the windows for delivery early December all being well. I've never done this kind of thing before so it's been a major steep learning curve every single step of the way. It's been gruelling, interesting, and a but if a pig of a project because it has two curved & vaulted roofs with some flat roof in between. The architects detail drawings were all rubbish so I've had to work a lot of it out myself. Oh, and it's been fun too in parts ? Covid has, like for many, taken its toll in terms of progress so I'm well behind on my timeline, (the rain and storms last winter didn't help much either) but I've at least just installed the roof before winter and now getting the cladding on too. Much to do still but I've attached some pictures of the build.