By Amy Hanlon on 17 May 2023
Roofing felt isn’t a bad option for your shed. In fact, we have built many, many sheds with felt as their roofing material. But these days we no longer offer felt as an option.
Why not?
Gillies & Mackay build products that are designed to last in the Scottish climate. Invest in a G&M, look after your building carefully, and you’ll never have to buy a replacement.
Of course, maintaining your building involves a certain amount of work and attention. Sometimes bits and pieces need to be painted, replaced, or repaired.
When we offered felt as a roofing option, we weren’t just thinking about keeping the price down. Felt is the cheapest option for roofing a shed or summerhouse, guaranteed for 10 years. Sometimes you might even get away without replacing your felt for 15 or so years; it very much depends on the weather. But your G&M will last much longer than 10 years if it’s well cared for.
What problems can happen with felt roofs?
When our sheds and summerhouses had felt roofs, the felt needed to be replaced as time passed. If the felt wasn’t replaced in time, oor Sheddies reported problems like water ingress. Of course, as responsible shed doctors, we did our best to sort out these problems.
But what we found over the years was that problems caused by felt weren’t always solved by just replacing the felt. Despite our best efforts, sometimes the water still got in. We tried modifying our design – more strips of felt, fewer strips of felt, and different placement of the strips. But this didn’t always make a difference.
Is there an alternative to felt roofs?
Finally, the very best solution we found was replacing the felt with steel box profile roofing. With a manufacturer’s guarantee of 20 years, a steel box profile roof is a great fit for your G&M. A long-lasting roofing material for a long-lasting shed.
Any time we had to replace felt with steel, we found ourselves wishing that we’d just used steel in the first place.
Felt just wasn’t holding up as a reliable option.
So in 2022, we decided to ensure that none of our future Sheddies would ever face problems with a felt roof again. That’s why our sheds now come with steel box profile roofs as standard. We have only one summerhouse model with a torch-on felt roof, and while torch-on felt is way more reliable than standard roofing felt, we’re working on replacing that with steel too. These shaped roofs are complicated! But other than that, no felt, thanks.
We build reliable timber buildings that are designed to last a lifetime, and we’re always learning. Our 30 years of experience didn’t come from building perfect sheds on day one. True experience is built on honest assessment of our products, acknowledgement of any problems, honest conversations about how to improve these problems, and a genuine desire to find solutions. That’s how you build really brilliant sheds, summerhouses, garages, and garden rooms. That’s the Gillies & Mackay way.
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