Icotherm – What’s in the roof?

Friday June 18 2021 BY ICOTHERM

Solid roofs for conservatories are here to stay. What was probably considered as a bit of a fad when they first appeared on the market has now become a recognised product category that keeps on growing.
The last 12 months have pushed this growing trend yet further upwards as people found themselves having to work from home and struggled to find a useable space. Conservatory transformations, (or new single storey extensions) were quick becoming the most efficient way to create it.
With this increase demand came a greater number of installers looking for the right roof to use, and in turn the product offering itself developed.
What we are now seeing is the development from a repurposed – but somewhat inefficient and complex – aluminium framed solid roof offering, to a more traditional, efficient, and simpler timber framed roof range.

How does it work?

The Icotherm roofs are made using a timber frame. This was always how we believe a roof should be built… you will not find many house roofs out there with anything but a timber frame, so why change something that has worked for centuries.
• Timber, a material with thermal conductivity of only 0.16 W/m2k, simplifies the process of insulation and ventilation – against an aluminium frame), as it does not require cloaking.
• Premium C24 building grade timber and 155mm EPS boards guarantees the structural integrity and U-Value performance (0.18W/m2k, which can be brought down to 0.12W/m2k with the use of insulated plasterboard, ideal for the Scottish market).
• Designed either with a fully ventilated “cold” roof construction, with airflow circulating over the eaves and through the entire roof, or with a “warm” roof construction, ensuring condensation will never be an issue.
• Pre-fabricated pods and pre-cut insulation provides a solution that goes up quickly (an average sized roof should go up in 2 hours, with the waterproof membrane on)
• 155mm fully recyclable, rigid EPS insulation

Building control compliancy

One of the bigger building Inspector organisation recently announced that they would reduce the number of systems they were able to work with due to the ever increasing volume of work. This was not surprising to Icotherm, as we had already ceased working with them.
It does not detract from the fact that Icotherm roofs are all building control compliant
Icotherm invested a lot of time and money into making sure that our roof options are structurally sound and met building control requirements.
So, not only does Icotherm provide the installer with a ready to go, easy to install solution, but one for which the structural calculations have already been done. It saves time (fast install, no prep work), money (no material wastage), and of course is building control compliant.
And to further protect our product integrity, we work with Building Control Inspectors Ball & Berry, who carry out strict checks to ensure the roofs certified are indeed ours.
Did you know?
• CRA (Condensations Risk Analysis) checked and approved.
• TRADA members
• Beams and insulation pre-cut to size
• Tiles delivered with the roof
• Fully labelled components for a worry-free installation
• We design gable roofs without tie bars
• We offer a low-pitch solution (Ico600), a flat roof (Icospan) and a hybrid (Icoview)

What does the future hold?

With over 4 million conservatories already installed in the UK back in 2013, and assuming a very conservative 500000 additionnal installations since then, it would be a fair to estimate to say that there must be some 2 million conservatories that are over 10 years old, and would benefit from an upgrade. We’ll leave it to the readers to determine what the potential is… may be it is down to them, the installers, to push that conversion rate. Do you think 5%, 10%, 25%, 50% of your old customers might be interested in transforming their rooms?