Articles » The Building Diaries: Part 5, Roofing
Build me. Editor Hana Deavoll and family are building their own home in Queenstown. Follow the journey as they buy land, plan their dream home and oversee the building process. The Deavoll Family includes Hana (37), builder Sam (36), and their children Indy (7), Phoenix (4), Sonny (2) and #4 due next year.
A big milestone has been reached this week with the installation of our roof. Sam, an experienced roofer, installed the roof himself, which took about two weeks due to the complexity of the product.
The Product
Our roof is Alpine Tray Coloursteel, manufactured by Queenstown Roofing. The colour is 'Bracken', which is actually just Matte Ironsand.
Underneath, we have chosen a superior roofing underlay, 'Solitex Mento 3000 connect, ' supplied by ProClima. We selected this product due to it's many benefits:
- Superior weather tightness
- Thermal resistance
- It can be exposed for up to 90 days to rain and UV
- Easy to install due to larger than usual rolls, with built in edge adhesive for easy connections
Your roof is one of the most important defences to the weather so it is worth upgrading roofing underlay to keep the building really dry before the roof goes on, as well as to avoid any leaky building issues later on. We also used Cavibat batons to create a roof cavity space under the iron.
The Process
After the trusses went up and our roof frames were signed off by council, the entire roof was covered in the Solitex roofing underlay. Meanwhile the team from Queenstown Roofing came and installed facia around the perimeter of the bottom of our roof. Facia is the boundary between the end of your roof and the start of your eaves or cladding.
Next we put green 'Cavibat' batons over the paper, to allow a cavity between the roof and the paper. These plastic cavitiy batons allow the roof space to drain and ventilate, removing unwanted moisture. This is currently not enforced under building regulations, but is highly recommended.
Finally, the icing on the cake - our Alpine Tray roof. These were manufactured on site in panels 455mm wide by up to 4.5m long. Each panel was individually installed and fixed down with a hidden clip system for a seamless finish.
And the finished product - beautiful. The colour was a bit of a risk, as there are very few houses with this coloured roofing, but we are now so happy we went with it. It has an undercover appearance, a luxurious shade of brown that seems to change with the weather and the light, and blends in nicely to the Central Otago landscape.
Related Articles
The Building Diaries: Part 1, The Section
The Building Diaries: Part 2, Design & Planning
The Building Diaries: Part 3: The Foundations
The Building Diaries: Part 4, Framing & Trusses
Free EBook - Building in NZ: An Essential Guide to Building Your Own Home
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