Raising the profile of hot melt waterproofing

Survey conducted by Permanite Engineered Roofing Systems reveals that awareness of hot melt waterproofing systems lags worryingly behind awareness of other waterproofing systems.

The survey, conducted at the Ecobuild trade show in London during March, canvassed visitors on their awareness of hot melt in comparison to other systems such as BUFR, single ply, mastic asphalt and liquid systems, and revealed that hot melt is clearly the lesser known of all the systems.

Only 10% of respondents (most of whom were architects) had any direct knowledge or experience of hot melt waterproofing, while 78% did not know the difference between mastic asphalt and hot melt.

Hot Melt Waterproofing Systems have been successfully used in the UK for the past 25 years.

Speaking about the survey results, Les Turnell of Permanite said; "This survey confirms our belief that awareness of hot melt is worryingly low in the UK, yet the latest generation of hot melt systems manufactured domestically deliver excellent environmental credentials and create virtually no site waste.

As a monolithic waterproofing system for roofs, hot melt is at the cutting edge of sustainability.

The construction industry, and in particular architects, need to be made more aware of this".

Hot melt systems are increasingly popular with the contractors who install it because of its ease-of-use, while EcoWrap from Permanite is further impressing contractors due to the extremely low levels of site waste it creates.

However, architects remain largely ignorant of hot melt's environmental benefits.

"Architects are increasingly concerning themselves with sustainability and are at the forefront of new construction techniques such as natural ventilation, yet there are clearly gaps in their knowledge when it comes to the performance of materials.

It's a challenge to educate them, but if they want to be able to offer truly sustainable construction, they need to know which materials have the superior green credentials.

"EcoWrap is manufactured in the UK which reduces carbon delivery miles to a minimum, and features lower temperature technology which means less energy is used during installation.

Crucially, the new packaging for EcoWrap produces 96.1% reduction in waste.

These are the performance issues which architects need to be made aware of to plug the gaps in their knowledge.

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