Thermacore Warm Roof System

[Shane Clarke] Mōrena everybody. We're just going to wait another 30 seconds or so while the room fills. Thanks for those of you that are nice and early. Kia ora, tēnā koutou katoa. Thanks very much for joining us today. This is our number 10 Nuralite webinar. Thanks to the invention of COVID-19, we've gone to this new platform rather than popping around and seeing you all individually and your practises and whatnot. So normally when we do that, we'd take a plate of muffins with us and obviously we're unable to do that now. So what we're doing instead is we're actually donating $10 for every participant that turns up to our webinars. And today's charity is Women's Refuge. So we're really proud to be able to support them. And you should all be really proud of yourselves too if you've actually participated and you've already made the world a better place. So good on you. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Shane Clarke. I'm the general manager here at Nuralite. Nuralite's been synonymous with flat roofing and waterproofing for the last 50 years. And recently, I guess, as in 15 years ago, we've been promoting very hard the practise of warm roofing, which most of you will probably be familiar with, hopefully. If not, I'm going to get one of my panellists, Andrew Hawkins, onto you and he will learn you what they are. I'm very privileged today to have with me on the panel, I have Alan and Peter from Gerard Roofing. Between them, they've got a few years experience, so it's great to have them on the panel today. And I also have Andrew Hawkins, our product manager for Outright Insulation. What we want to talk to you about today is obviously the benefits of a warm roof, but we're obviously in conjunction with the Thermacore system from Gerard. Later on, I'll let the guys from Gerard talk to you about who they are and what they do. They've got a much better understanding of it than I have. And just before we start, I want to kick off with a poll. So rather than you sitting there watching me talk at you all morning, I want this to be interactive. So by all means, get on the keyboard. And the first poll is, have you heard of putting insulation in a pitched or skilling roof situation before? Just give us an idea of what sort of experience we have here and how deep we dive. Now, these webinars are limited to 30 minutes. We'll have time for a Q&A towards the end there. And we'll do our best to get through those questions. We do appreciate that your time is precious to you. So we do stick to that 30 minutes. So yeah, thanks for those participating in that first poll. There's a couple more throughout the webinar. So look out for those. And also for those of you new to Zoom, down the bottom there, you've got a Q&A or a chat function. So by all means, feel free to use those. I'll see them come up and we'll be able to get the questions to the field. So right, I'm going to hand over to Andrew Hawkins, the product manager for Outright Insulation, who's going to give us a bit of a rundown on warm roofs, et cetera, and all things insulation. Over to you, Andrew. [Andrew Hawkins] Thank you, Shane. And thank you, everybody, for joining us today. Nice to see you in your virtual place. I can't see you, but I know you're all there. And welcome back. Outright Insulation, who are we? We're first of all, a brand under the Nuralite waterproofing business and responsible for promoting and driving the principles of continuous insulation around the building envelope. And our little decal there shows a nice little bit of information. So walls, flat roofs, pitch roofs, floors, all of those areas looking for a high performance insulation. And it's what we like to call out insulation. If you've followed us so far in all of these different webinars, you'll have seen Outright come up a number of times. Pitch roofs for commercial applications, flat roofs with membranes. So there's our wall. There are also exterior wall applications and non-combustible insulation was a new one that we talked about. And Outright is being used as part of this system to promote warm concepts. Not forgetting, insulation is not the only answer. We still must ventilate. We still must look after the warmth and the cooling of a building. We still extract to make a building happy and healthy and for the people living in it. But what we also have to remember is insulation is one of the simplest and best ways to get it right and to get a good start. So if you haven't followed us before, don't worry. You can go back to the Nuralite website and you'll see all the webinars that have been in the past. And there's a whole range of things that you want to see there. So in the slide that we've got here, continuously insulated house. So you can see here we've got the insulation on the outside of the walls and we've got it on top of the roofing structure. And that's what Outright is all about. Getting those warm concepts. So changing the position of the insulation so that you have a much higher level of performance. One of the biggest difficulties with insulation in these kinds of situations is the fact that you put the insulation between the timber frame or inside the concrete wall. That, of course, leads to thermal bridging or reducing the amount of thermal benefit that you will see. So this is a major factor. Continuous insulation takes away from that issue of thermal bridging. A continuous layer, like putting an extra blanket on or putting a jumper on when it's cold. You control the heat inside or the cooling inside and you stop that heat or cooling escaping. And that way you actually get a more efficient building. The other areas that you can see within this building would be floors and internal applications. So you can still have more insulation there. But the concept here is really to talk about how those products work and how they are more efficient. But the concept of insulation and out insulation, as we call it, is something that is not new. It's well tried and tested and has been used in all parts of the world for the last 35-40 years with the insulation that we use manufactured either in Asia or in Europe. So here with the PIR from Europe, they've been using it. And this example here, a nice little, very highly pitched house and gives you all of the benefits of out insulation. Providing a much better overall structure to the building and much better thermal performance. But today we're here to talk about not just these applications that you can see, but talk about a new partnership that we have. So Nuralite and Outright are joining together and specifically looking at residential pitched roofs and the whole warm roof concept. And that is brought together by our new partner Gerard Roofs. Typically the higher pitched roofs, so not the flat roofs that you would see that Nuralite specialise in. And there's also a very high range of finishes and styles to meet the requirements of the types of buildings that you want to design. And I'll be passing over to the Gerard team shortly and they'll be able to give you a little bit more information about how and why this system has come about. [Peter Richards] Hi, my name's Peter Richards. I'm the product innovation manager at Gerard Roofs and RoofTG. [Alan Wilson] And I'm Alan Wilson. I'm the installation manager, national installation manager for Gerard Roofs. Would you like to just do a bit of an introduction, a bit about who we are? [Peter Richards] So Gerard Roofs, we've been in New Zealand for 60 plus years and we're part of a larger group which are called RoofTG, Roof Tile Group. And we operate three plants around the world. There's one in Belgium, USA and here in New Zealand. And New Zealand production, we're exporting 80% of what we're manufacturing here. So we've got a range of profiles and things. We've got offices in Japan, Australia, the Middle East, the UK, Philippines. So we can get feedback from all of these markets and put it into roofing systems in New Zealand. [Alan Wilson] So here in New Zealand, we have a range of profiles from shingle, shake, slate and tile profile. And they come in both a textured finish and a limited number of paint or smooth coated finished tiles. The tiles here in New Zealand are installed by our Gerard network of certified roofers. 45 roofing companies working throughout New Zealand from Cape Reinga to the Bluff. So we cover all regions in New Zealand. What we became aware of is that, as Pete mentioned before, we've got a plant in Europe. And we've become aware of them using the endotherm PIR board. And we thought that there was opportunities here in New Zealand to explore that. So Gerard approached Nuralite and together we partnered together and we've come up with the Thermacore system. That we believe it creates not only the warm roof solution, but it looks great. And outperforms the traditional type of roofing, which is roofing with glass wool insulation. [Peter Richards] Do you want to go to the next slide? So here's one of our technical recordings there. You can see the endotherm board, the insulation, that's an 80 mil option there. We're looking at a counter pattern system. So with the first green arrow, the lower green arrow, there is a ventilated space there. That's an insulation layer in itself. Then there's a roofing underlay, which is vapour permeable. So any rising moisture that should come through the system, which is pretty unlikely, that can go in through the next space, perhaps condensate on the tiles. But the top arrow there shows an area where Gerard roofs have a passive ventilation area. Moisture can get out of that area anywhere up the roof. You can see we've built the system with really large screws that go down through the counter patterns and into the rafters. That's sort of separated. There's no thermal break there. There's a small screw going through the material, but it's not in direct contact with the metal at all. So it's, you know, it's a well insulated area. The other thing is about, everyone talks about keeping the warmth in of a roof, but we also want to keep the heat out during the summers as well. And those two ventilation spaces we have help keep the heat out. And then it'll keep the area underneath the PIR board cooler as well. So you're not going to need as much energy to generate your econ unit or anything like that. [Alan Wilson] So we've just dropped the brochure and spec sheet into the chat for you all to have a look at. One of the things about us is we are committed to the environment here at Gerard. We're members of the New Zealand Green Building Council. We were the first roofing company to get the declare label. Our manufacturing plant is ISO 14001. And we've got the environmental choice tick for our Stratos satin tile. So we're committed to, obviously, the environment. We, yeah, I don't know, is there anything else Peter? [Peter Richards] Yeah, well, if you look at the picture there, we've got the end of thin board. There's no, we haven't put the underlay there so we can see the system, but the tiles are up above the board there. This particular profile is our Alpine profile. At the moment it's coming only in a textured finish. There's other things that we're doing as well. New product, we've got solar brackets. It's a solar bracket which fits underneath what we call the head lap of the tile and comes out of the nose so there's no penetration through the tile at all. That's best done when the roof is new, but they can be post fitted if needed. We also have a range of profile vents that can come up through the roofing and it's textured or painted in the same materials that we make the steel roof out of. And, of course, that would all be sealed around the end of thin board as well so we don't want that heat escaping. Okay. [Alan Wilson] Nice. Sorry, Shane. No, no, you're all right. [Peter Richards] Go for it. [Alan Wilson] Watch this space. We do have some more profiles on their way. And, yeah, we look to sort of introduce some of those profiles into the market next year. [Shane Clarke] Excellent. That's a really good overview of the system. Particularly a big fan of that cavity you've got between the underside of the tile and the insulation layer. From our studies, that's a very important piece of the puzzle. What are some of the advantages of a metal tile over a long run metal tray? That's one of the questions that's just popped in here. [Peter Richards] Oh, okay, Shane. So, a metal tile, there's no contact between the underlay and the back of the tile. So, there's that air gap which acts as an insulation area. The underlay would never get wet, you know, if you're in a long run roof and you've got, say, night sky radiation and there's moisture there. The back of the underlay can gather a bit of moisture as well. That just doesn't happen in a pressed metal tile roof. We've got our interlocking system as well and each tile is fastened with four nails front to back. So, it's great in high winds, extra high winds. We have a system which is put together so we can go to extra high wind zones with no changes at all, just screwing the battens on. But in a counter batten system on this roof, we would just have one system up to extra high zone. If you come across a specific design or anything like that, you've probably got to come and talk to us and we can do some engineering calculations and look at that as well, make sure it's going to stay on. [Shane Clarke] Yeah, no, great, great, great, great overview. Just, I guess, to give us a sense of scale, how many roofs did Gerard do each year, you think? Roughly, I mean, to the nearest ten. [Peter Richards] Roughly, this plant here, we could probably cover 95% of all residential roofs in New Zealand. Look at that scale, so 80% of what we're doing is being exported. And our overseas plants would be, they're not quite as big as us, but they're still, combined, they'd be nearly as big, if not bigger than us. [Shane Clarke] Excellent. All right, we'll come back to some more Q&A. Great to see the questions coming in thick and fast from the floor. It's really good to see. We'll definitely make sure we've got a bit of time towards the end there to run over that. Just going to throw back to Andrew for a couple of minutes. He's going to talk to us about applications of Thermacore and how it's going to actually outperform the, I guess, traditional systems that we're using here. [Andrew Hawkins] Yeah, thanks, gentlemen. That was excellent. And really good to see the system coming to life. As you can see, two examples here, a high-pitched roof, the insulation going on the outside. And the warm roof concept provides some pretty strong design principles. And it also provides lots of options. So if we take the traditional roofing structure with a truss system, as you rightly said, guys, the typical insulation is a lofted insulation on the inside. But here we've got the insulation on the outside. So that's one of the major things. It starts to become a little bit more difficult as we start looking at the Scyllian or cathedral-style roofs. First of all, where do you put the insulation? Because there isn't a space for it. Ceilings change. So in many of those situations, there's no ceiling. And we did do a project just recently, which was this particular one here, which was the Abodo office at Cadrona. And this was with Assembly Architects. So this is a great example of design and aesthetic. So the design was all about space. The aesthetic was to see the rafters and see the actual structure. So if we think about the warm roof concept, and especially with the tiles, by putting everything on the outside, we are keeping this design style and this design principle. It's the best place to insulate in the health of the building and the structure and the way that the building operates. And the tiles that were talked about today will lend themselves very nicely into these kinds of applications. So again, we're not talking here of a warm roof like a commercial long-run roof, or like the Nuralite warm roof, which is a very shallow pitch, in fact, down to one degree. Here we're talking of much higher pitches. And it provides the architect the range of opportunities to design and get the aesthetic and get the space that allows these kinds of buildings to be built. And the one thing you've got to remember about warm roofs is they're not new. And they're certainly not new here in New Zealand. So tried, tested, and trusted as part of a Nuralite warm roof system for the last 12 to 14 years, depending on who you talk to. But well, well-managed and well-organised system. So we're just bringing along all these new ideas so that we can start building better buildings, but also more attractive buildings like this cathedral or skillion style. And that's where the roofing application works with the tiles. That's where the whole warm roof concept on the outside gives us these options. And it's certainly the way I like to see some of these buildings develop. And we're not using the same things that we've used in the past. We're developing. We are moving forward. [Shane Clarke] Excellent, Andrew. Thanks for that rundown. It's really good. Look, we do have a couple of minutes left for the Q&A. It looks like it's becoming quite popular. So I think I know who the question will be aimed at. Otherwise, you guys can rock, paper, scissors for whoever answers it. We've got a question here for Gerard. Do we need to do anything different for metal tile roofs around the coastal areas? Do you have limitations on that, or is it something we do differently in those areas? [Peter Richards] Yeah, we have some limitations on profiles. Textured finish is what we prefer people to use. Otherwise, it's good to go. We've had roofs out there since early 80s of the aluminium zinc coated steel we're using, and they're still in really great condition. [Shane Clarke] Oh, great. This one might be for you, Andrew. Is there a chance of condensation below this roof? So we showed earlier that technical drawing, two-dimensional line drawing. So we're talking to that particular example. Is there a chance of condensation below that point? [Andrew Hawkins] There is always a chance of condensation or moisture occurring. The key to it with the roof buildup is to actually model it, first of all, to show the right thickness of insulation to provide the right level of performance. It's less likely in a timber roof structure like this than it would be if it was a metal structure. So if you've got a metal tray, you would often put a vapour barrier in that position, just like you would with the Nuralite wall roof. With a timber structure, it's less likely. But the most important thing is talk to us and we can model your roof for your building in your location. And that's the key to understanding the science and making sure it's working for you. [Shane Clarke] So you're saying basically by modelling it, we can actually eliminate any condensation issues. [Andrew Hawkins] We can find the right insulation value. We can find the right performance and show that it works. [Shane Clarke] OK, great. Another one for the team at Gerrard there. Once you've finished your metal tile roof, is it possible to walk on it? If you had to sort of maintain the roof or check the gutters, is it trafficable in that sense? [Alan Wilson] It is trafficable, Shane, but you must know what you're doing. Of course, you're up at heights, so you've got to be safe. Obviously, walking, soft shoes on the battens. But we really recommend that professionals enter that area. [Peter Richards] If you look on our website, there's a warranty guide and things like that. And there's a drawing there where you can walk around on a roof if you really need to. [Shane Clarke] OK, great stuff. This sounds like an insulation question for you, Andrew. We're using Enertherm PIR in this example here. What are some of the limitations of Enotherm and what would you do after that point? [Andrew Hawkins] As far as the New Zealand Building Code is concerned, we limit the PIR to a height of 10 metres or three storeys. So it can be used in all types of residential, multi-residential or low-level industrial type buildings. And the one major reason there is the fact that it has a very good fire performance, but not good enough to go beyond that 10 metres. As far as thermal performance, there are many products that are better than a closed cell PIR. So really, it comes down to the design of the building. It comes down to the application. It comes down to understanding the principles of why the building is going to be built that way and how it's going to be used. So really, that's the key. If we go above the 10 metres, we do have other products available and we will be happy to talk about those at another time. [Shane Clarke] Okay, great. Jade, our director, is working feverishly in the background. We'll use questions coming through. It's great. That slide with the two-dimensional line drawing has raised a few questions. Could we flick back to that? Yeah, this is the one. So in this example here, it looks like we've used an 80mm PIR board and there's a question here. What sort of R values are we achieving with that kind of build-up? [Andrew Hawkins] So the 80mm PIR provides a product R value of R3.64. So very high values. And the benefit, of course, is that we're running the insulation continuously. So we are taking away the thermal bridging. Now, in a wall or roof structure, that can be anything from 15 to 20% reduction in the R value. So here we're getting exactly what it says on the tin, as they say. R3.64 is the value. That's what the sticker says and that's what you're going to get. And as the guys also mentioned as well, you get a little bit of extra value with the air spaces and the performance around working with the product. So the R value for the build-up would be greater. [Shane Clarke] Yeah, right. So that R value is high for New Zealand, but not high from an international point of view, is it? I can tell you've got a slightly different accent than mine, so you've got a little bit more experience around that. Would you say it's sort of high for New Zealand, but not the rest of the world? [Andrew Hawkins] Well, if we look at where we are in the world and we look at other places that have similar kinds of environments to us, we are very, very low. So even taking places like Sydney and Melbourne in Australia, taking the UK, much, much higher R values and much thicker insulation. So we've got a way to go. [Shane Clarke] This is a great start. Question here for the GRR team. What's the product warranty on the tile roof? [Alan Wilson] You've got a 50-year pro rata warranty on the tiles, and depending on the finish, it can be a 30 or 15-year warranty, 30 on the textured and 15 on the smooth. And of course, if you're in a sea spray zone, the warranties are slightly less. [Shane Clarke] Very open there. Going back again to this two-dimensional line drawing here. Someone's asked, do we still need a roof underlay if we've got a cavity in that situation there between the metal tile and the continuous insulation? Do we still need a roofing underlay there? [Peter Richards] Yeah, well, all metal roofs in New Zealand have to have a roofing underlay. It's good there. It's there to absorb any condensation moisture that would occur usually on the back of a steel roof. However, yeah, just by law, we have to have that underlay layer there. [Andrew Hawkins] If I could add to that, we're often asked about the PIR, if it can work as a wrap board or as a building wrap. And the answer is no. Again, the building code is very specific, saying that a building wrap or wrap board has to do certain jobs. The benefit of putting the two together is it's fully then compliant with the New Zealand building code. So that's it simply. [Shane Clarke] Okay, great. I've got a couple more minutes and I'll just try and pick some of these questions out here. When we lay the insulation board on top of the rafters and trusses and whatnot, how do we join the PIR board? Does it have to join over a raft or a truss or how do we go about that? [Andrew Hawkins] Yes, it does. Well, the board edges are the most vulnerable part. The boards are coming in a large size, either 2.4 or 2.27 metres long and 1200 wide. But they have to join over a rafter or if there was a counter batten or a purling in between the rafters. And that's just because that's the most vulnerable part where the board joins. And simply, you have to take the care of the guys said before about it's got to be done by a professional. So it has to be installed properly. [Shane Clarke] And it's great. Lucky last question, I think for the guys at Gerard, this is a very New Zealand question. Can we collect potable water from the roof? [Peter Richards] Yes, you can. Both coatings, the smooth finish or the textured finish have been tested to WHO or World Health Organisation standards. And that was just done recently as well. But yeah, you can collect the water off on a new roof. You should let it flush for three good rainfalls. That's just to remove any surfactants that may be in the system or still on the surface. And then it's good to take the water from the roof. Great stuff. [Shane Clarke] All right. Thanks very much to my panellists today. Thank you very much for your time. That was the Thermacore system in conjunction with outright insulation. We talked about putting the insulation continuously outside the structure. We're eliminating that condensation point. That's basically what we talked about in this 30 minute section. There's still a few questions that have gone unanswered. Unfortunately, we're getting close to time there. So what we will do is when we send this out, we will there'll be a text version of all the questions and answers. So there'll be a recap of that along with this recording, which you can save forever if you like. I'm going to run a second poll here just to rate our presentation, what you thought of it. We're keen to get your feedback, make sure that we're all getting the most value out of these. And just interestingly as an aside, we have one of our industry colleagues, Sean McIsaac from Oculus, next Wednesday will be talking about outside insulation. This whole concept that we're quite keen on, putting the insulation on the outside of the structure. So he's pretty prolific around the internet. I'm pretty sure you'll find him. Otherwise, what we can do is we can actually chuck the link into the chat function of this and it'll be available when we send it out. And we also have some more up and coming webinars. So the next one will be, I'm quite looking forward to this one, will be five waterproofing myths busted. So we quite often get pushed back to the industry saying you can't do this, this and this. Or I've heard this, that and the other. And we're quite keen to bust those. The webinar after that, we'll be talking about best practise for waterproofing and tanking below ground. Again, Nuralite takes a very best practise, I guess, focused solution. You only really get one chance below ground. And then the next webinar after that, round about the end of October, we'll be designing decks with Nurajacks. So again, in conjunction with the waterproofing, we're adding a trafficable surface to maximise the use of those spaces. And the third poll will be, would you like a follow up? Are you working on something at the moment that you'd like a follow up with any of the panellists today? Any other questions we can answer, just let us know and we'll be in contact with you pretty quickly. All these webinars, like I said, this is the number 10 one. They're all available on our education page from our website. There's also the links to the up and coming webinars. By all means, feel free to participate and make sure your $10 donation goes to the right place. Thanks very much again to my panellists. Thanks again to the team in the background. Smooth as silk. I look forward to seeing you all on the next webinar. Thanks again for your time, gents, and we'll see you next time. Thanks, guys. Bye.