The Trussed Rafter Association (TRA) has raised concerns about using stressed-skin type panels to create ‘room in the roof’ spaces.
The TRA maintains that these panels – first popularised, it says, on the Continent – are less suited to UK buildings and that it makes more sense to use tried and tested timber trussed rafters.
It maintains ‘there are few building frontages in the UK narrow enough for panels to span from gable to gable, which means that purlins and intermediate supports have to be used’.
Peter Grimsdale, TRA secretary, said: ‘Sponsors of these roof panels are attempting to introduce them to the UK where design considerations are different. This would go against building philosophy of the past 40 years – which is to avoid internal load-bearing walls at upper storeys wherever possible.’
Additionally, the TRA says that when panels are inadequately connected there is a danger that the front and the back of a building can drift apart.
In a statement to the UK architectural press the TRA also stated that there are ‘well-publicised fire safety concerns’ about the plastic foam used in some panel types as an ‘insulating sandwich’.
‘Undoubtedly, all of these problems with roof panels can be overcome – but why bother? Room in the roof trussed rafters provide a quick and easy solution using tried and tested technology which is fully understood by virtually all site operatives,’ said Mr Grimsdale. ‘The trusses incorporate a ready-made floor platform and any permutations of hip-ends, valleys and intersecting roofs can be accommodated.’
He said that some in the construction industry still mistakenly view trussed rafters as only suitable as a low-cost, high speed method of constructing simple roofs.
Figures from Velux indicate that by 2002 25% of all new houses will incorporate some form of room in the roof.
