Do your roof battens make the grade?

Christian Brash, Managing Director of John Brash and Co explains why roofing battens should be graded - a hot topic of debate in the building trade at the moment.

Christian Brash takes a look at recent developments in this area.

"The debate on where battens should be graded is gaining momentum in the industry.

The majority of battens are still graded on site, yet this is starting to change as contractors recognise the benefits of factory-graded battens that are guaranteed to comply with BS 5534: 2003.

Battens are a vital element of the roof structure and with each revision of BS5534, the code of practice for slating and tiling, the requirements have been revised and the standard increased.

The debate on battens and their grading has been ignited by the launch of JB-RED.

Until then pre-graded battens were not available to the roofing industry.

The industry had to rely on the interpretation that the National Federation of Roofing Contractors set out in their Technical Bulletin (TB33).

This outlined two main courses of action to the contractor in achieving compliance.

One was to obtain supplies of battens which had been graded as complying with BS5534 and were manufactured within a recognized independently assessed quality assurance system, or, to obtain battens that had not been fully graded but will be seen to be graded by selection at the point of use to the full requirements of BS5534.

It was very much the responsibility of the buyer to have an assured understanding of the degree of grading offered by the supplier.

Battens supported and fixed in accordance with BS 5534 are designed to have adequate strength to support the dead, imposed and wind loads on the roof clad with slates, tiles or shingles.

They may be used as an alterative to roof ladders, if they are attached to rafters no more than 540mm apart, this is set out within the health and Safety Executive Guidance in HSG 33, Health and Safety in Roof Work.

It can be seen that additional risk assessments and clear provision for grading on site should be made while there is any doubt as to the grade of the roofing battens supplied.

This leads to the potential for real liability as health and safety requirements become more stringent, with the result that an increasing number of contractors are now beginning to recognize the benefits of factory graded battens.

The consequences of poor grading of battens on site was recently made apparent to a developer in East Anglia.

Following an accident, when an apprentice tiler fell through a single storey roof, a subsequent inspection found the battens to be of poor quality and 'riddled with knots'.

These findings resulted in the developer taking the decision to convert fully to JB-RED factory graded battens.

The example shows clearly how problems can occur when grading is done by hand on site.

And even though problems may only happen on an infrequent basis (this was the first incident for this particular developer), when it does the consequences can be far reaching.

Changing to JB-RED now gives this developer the confidence that their battens are properly graded under strict factory conditions.

Grading forms an important part of the battens' performance because it is only those battens of the correct standard that are able to withstand the increased wind loading pressures faced by modern roof structures.

A worrying development has been the appearance of some imported battens that are marked with BS 5534: 2003, indicating they are factory graded.

However, we would always encourage merchants to ask their supplier how these have been graded, for example, do they have any third party accreditation? It is always worth asking this question because the manufacture of roofing battens is quite a technical process involving hundreds of metres of battens per minute being fed through the machines.

If the supplier indicates that the battens have been hand graded, there is always the potential that in volume production sub standard products are going to be missed.

As a result, when we set about developing factory graded battens we always knew that it would have to be a mechanised process.

The volume of product and variability resulting from hand grading was the reason why we introduced a laser scanning process which is now capable of scanning 250m of battens every minute.

Two lasers, two high resolution cameras and eight computers carefully select the compliant batten.

These battens are guaranteed not to have defects beyond those allowed in BS 5534:2003.

During the development of JB-RED, we worked with the Building Research Establishment (BRE) and now carry their certification that we have both the operational process controls and calibration systems in place to ensure manufacturing consistency to the set standard.

Once we had devised a way to grade the battens in the factory the next step was to identify the graded from non-graded on site and for this we eventually decided to dye the battens red and brand them as JB-RED.

As it turned out this proved to be just the right decision - as one of the site managers with the developer in East Anglia told us: 'if it's red we now know it complies.' Moving the whole market over to graded battens overnight was never going to be an easy process.

The difficulty we faced was that many roofers and contractors are used to grading battens on site, which meant that merchants only had a demand for traditional battens.

However, the debate over recent months is beginning to change opinions as contractors realize there are both time saving and safety benefits of using factory graded battens.

SIG Roofing Supplies Group is stocking JB-RED in many of their depots because as a company they are constantly looking at ways to offer materials that help enhance industry standard's, aid the improvement of health and safety on site and make customer jobs run smoothly, with as little risk as possible for its customers and their employees.

Launched only a few months ago, the factory graded roofing batten meant that they could offer their customers materials that guaranteed compliance with BS 5534: 2003.

SIG Roofing Supplies Group gave us feedback that suggests JB-RED fits perfectly with their strategy of driving forward quality, safety and excellence in the roofing industry.

Word certainly seems to be spreading.

Sales across the market of JB-RED already account for 20 per cent of our roofing battens business, which considering that is was only launched at the beginning of 2007, is a phenomenal achievement.

Major bodies, including the NHBC, Trustmark and NFRC are also very interested in this area, particularly with regard to safety.

Merchants that have already taken JB-RED are reporting increased sales and we believe this trend will continue as more contractors learn of the benefits.

The whole debate was recently put into perspective by one of our customers, Mike Lewis from Robert Price Builders Merchants, when he commented: "We've been stocking JB-RED for several months now - it's a no worries product - it's treated, of good quality, clearly marked, and takes the hassle out of selling roofing batten for us".

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