REPLACING UNKNOWN & OBSOLETE  PROFILES

(Profiled Steel & Fibre-cement)

Obtaining replacement roofing or cladding sheets in an unknown or obsolete profile can be a problem.  SLE Cladding Ltd know  600 - 700 profiles exist or have existed from our rooflight manufacturers catalogues. This is not the sum total as frequently customers approach us with profiles that are not to be found in these catalogues.

The need for a few replacement sheets mainly arises on the change of ownership or change of tenant of a sound but oldish factory unit. The owner/tenant having had industrial pipes running through the cladding, or having incurred small amounts of damage to the sheeting, requiring to be made good before selling, or as a tenant before surrendering the tenancy.

There are several approaches to this problem the first and obvious is :-

TRACING THE PROFILES MANUFACTURER.

Is the manufacturer still in business or who has purchased the forming rolls? Older roll forming gear tends to be sold to third world countries and thus lost without trace or is deliberately cut up by its owners. To trace a profile from our catalogues we need some very exact measurements. The best way to obtain these is to take a piece of stiff paper or cardboard and with a fine black pen holding the cardboard against the end of an undamaged roofing sheet carefully trace the profile.

Post the cardboard tracing to us at SLE Cladding Ltd. Faxing without including the measurement is not recommended  as the fax machine can distort the size of the drawing. Taking the measurements yourself is OK if you have the patience and time to get them accurate. Corners on profiles are rounded and it is a question as to how far you measure to on the curve. Few people get it accurate and a couple of millimetres matters.

We at SLE Cladding Ltd will do our best to identify the profile and obtain it on your behalf if it is still in production.

WHAT IF IT'S NOT KNOWN OR IS AN OBSOLETE PROFILE?

If the missing/damaged sheets are on the roof or high up on the sides, think about the possibility of replacing with a translucent Glass Reinforced Rooflight (GRP ) or with either a DR. Refurb sheet, a cement grey coloured reinforced GRP replacement sheet or an OR. Oversheet for placing directly on top of the damaged sheet.

There can be a  problem here with the really obsolete profiles, insomuch as  the manufacturers require minimum orders totalling 50 linear metres before they will commence a production run. This quantity of orders may take a few days,  weeks months or even years to assemble if it is a really old or has been an unpopular profile. Glass Reinforced Plastic is expensive and fifty metres is far too much to purchase if only say 2 sheets are required.

CLICK HERE to go to the DR Refurb page.

CLICK HERE to go to the  OR Oversheet page. 

WHAT IF I DON'T WANT 50 METRES OF GRP SHEETS AS ABOVE.

All is not yet lost!. Look to replacing with another profile. This particularly applies to old asbestos roofs such as "Trafford Tile" (replacing it with P6 fibre-cement) but can work equally well with profiled steel roofs.

 Look to the end of the damaged roof. Can you strip off some sheets to repair the damaged areas with? The sheets will need to be stripped off in complete rows from ridge to eaves. Before contemplating such a move you will need to find a modern profile that at a distance does not look too dissimilar to the original one, but most important of all, has the ability to produce a watertight side lap over or under the existing remaining sheets. 

FINIAL OPTION.

If the offending roof is of box profiled metal such as plastisol. The final option is to have sheets specially made with the aid of a folder or brake press. There are some limitations to this process. Sheets can only be made up to a maximum of 3 metres long. Only straight folds can be done. Small Stiffening Ribs to either Crown, Valley or Web cannot be reproduced. Production is a slow labour intensive process, requiring great care and attention to detail, thus sheets are expensive compared to run of the mill profiled sheets. This answer to the problem is only viable for relatively small quantities of sheets.

Stiffening Ribs cannot be reproduced.

FINAL NOTE. You have lashed out on having some new profiled metal sheets made in the correct colour and profile and on fitting them find out that they stand out like a sore thumb, the original sheets having faded. The only answer is to obtain some oil based gloss paint to match the new sheets and tone it down with white paints until a near match with the colour of the original roof is achieved. The only drawback is that paint applied to new sheets may peel under very hot sunlight.

We hope that the above notes have been of some use to you in solving what can be a very difficult problem.

For further information please contact SLE Cladding Ltd. Tel. 01948 666 321. Fax.  01948 66 55 32

Copyright (c)1999 SLE Cladding Limited.