BUILDING MAINTENANCE HIGH RISE TO THE CHALLENGE The original Decent Homes deadline may be long gone, but the challenge of
ensuring that social housing stock meets current building regulations is ongoing. The need to upgrade sits alongside the demands of maintaining properties
and carrying out pre-emptive works to avoid degradation or expensive repairs, Firestone Building Products explain.
Managing costs is quite different from cutting corners on specification. Suppliers for major repair and upgrade programmes must not only be able to prove that their products offer good value and high performance at the time of installation, but should also be able to demonstrate the products’ whole life cost advantages in terms of maintenance, long-term performance and service life.
For occupied properties, it’s also important to minimise inconvenience for tenants. The practice of co- ordinating property upgrades with planned maintenance or repairs is a sound strategy, as it reduces both disruption and costs of associated requirements, such as scaffolding and welfare units.
It’s an approach that has been used successfull for a number of social housing blocks in Halifax. A rolling
programme of re-roofing works has seen more than 434 flats operated by Pennine Housing refurbished under the Efficiency North EN Procure Framework. The schemes have both improved thermal performance with new insulation and ensured water-tightness using the RubberGard™ EPDM Single Ply Waterproofing System from Firestone Building Products.
DECIDING THE SPEC While the programme of works
across the various blocks has been significant, the schemes have not involved an architect because the refurbishment for each block comprises roofing upgrades only. In order to determine the roof materials, therefore, a performance specification was devised for all Efficiency North Framework social housing schemes for Pennine Housing, this was prepared by
Pennine Housing’s in-house maintenance department.
The job of selecting a product that could conform to the performance specification fell to roofing contractor, SBS Roofing, and the company used its experience of high rise buildings to select an approach that would offer both excellent long- term performance and best value.
Phil Redfearn from SBS Roofing explained: “Roofing schemes for taller buildings not only involve working at height considerations, but also need to factor in the long-term performance of the waterproofing membrane to minimise maintenance and extend replacement intervals. That calls for a robust system with good compatibility with the substrate and excellent adhesion to avoid uplift.
“We had used Firestone’s RubberGard™ EPDM membrane on similar projects before and knew that it would be both fast to install, reducing time on site, and suitable as a long- term and cost-effective solution for buildings of various heights.”
SBS worked with the technical team at Firestone to develop the specification and test the chosen system prior to beginning work on site. Firestone developed a detailed specification to address the performance criteria and SBS tested it on isolated sections of each roof to ensure compatibility and anti-uplift. Working with the supplier in this way also ensured that there was no risk of over-specification and no roofing materials were wasted.
22 | TOMORROW’S FM
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