The best flat roof roofing material is undoubtedly an individual sheet of rubber custom made for weather-proofing flat roofs, such as Firestone’s EPDM product.

That is laid directly onto roof boarding, itself supported by the roof rafters and nagging. Insulating material is normally laid in the space between your two, and if you are renewing your flat roof anyway you might as well take the chance of renewing that at the same time.

This will almost certainly function as recommendation you obtain from any reputable builder or roofer advising you on replacing your existing flat roof.

Until recently the most used material for a new flat roof was bituminous felt laid in three layers, the first layer nailed down and top of the two bonded to the main one beneath with mastic bitumen. Depending on material used, this may mean heating a good bitumen-based compound to create it liquid, and pouring it onto the underlying felt and spreading it evenly on the whole section of the roof.

Then you had to wait for the compound to cool before applying the next layer, and at the end spreading a layer of stone chippings over the roof and bonding it with a chipping compound, this being to reflect natural sunlight preventing the felt and bitumen degrading quickly.

This was altogether a rather messy, complicated and time-consuming job best left to the professionals. In addition, there have been several stages where it had been very easy to neglect to make the roof weather-proof, e.g. where in fact the edge of the felt met the existing tile or slate roofing of the pitch roof.

In addition, if, or rather when, there developed a leak in the flat roof, it will be very difficult and messy to find out exactly where the rain was getting back in. Seldom would the manifestation of the leak on the ceiling of the area below be directly below the source of it. Water could get by way of a weakness in the bitumen felt and travel along a rafter before descending to the ceiling board below.

The new generation of rubber-based flat roofing systems are far superior. When you have reasonable DIY abilities then you can certainly probably do it yourself, with one other person to assist. You can easily look for a local supplier of rubber flat roof roofing material online, and the current price is only around �6.65 per square metre.

Most suppliers slice the material to the exact size and shape that you require so are there no unnecessary joins, meaning no weaknesses and an exceptionally long-lasting, leak-proof roof.

The vital section of the whole process is to ensure that there are no gaps between the rubber roof and any existing pitch roof where rain may penetrate. To ensure you can find no problems it’s important to run the rubber material up and beneath the tiles or slates of the adjoining pitch roof so that any rain dripping from the lower-most row falls onto the rubber, without possibility of it over-lapping the edge and getting underneath the pitch roof.

Roofing Companies Lafayette La Also, make sure that the prevailing slope of the flat roof towards the guttering or other method of water escape is maintained. The rubber is simply glued onto the roof boards and sealed where appropriate with metal brackets or bitumen in such a way that rain penetration is impossible. Mind that the glue covers the whole of the underneath of the rubber in order to avoid bumps in the surface that could obstruct the drainage of the water away.

Rubber roofs have been proven to last for more than 50 years under all weathers, so it really is the only real flat roof roofing material that you should consider when deciding on a new flat roof.