Pivotel Planning and Workmanship Leads to Award Win

Challenge

The owners of a home, tucked away on a remote station in coastal Northland, wanted to install solar panels to their existing rubber membrane roof. Harrisons Solar was invited to inspect the roof, but due to the membrane type, they weren’t sure how to proceed without seeking the opinion of Viking Approved Applicator, Roof Bay of Islands (Roof BOI). Seeing the existing roof had a rubber membrane, there were concerns around how to fasten the mounting blocks that the panels would be attached too. With a big question mark around the integrity of adhesion, Roof BOI sought the technical assistance of Viking Roofspec. After conducting some in-house testing using lap tape to secure our EJOT bars to the butyl, the wind uplift test results weren’t satisfactory. This home is located in an ‘extra high wind zone’, so it was imperative to Viking that the strength of adhesion met had contingency above the minimum requirements. In this case it didn’t. Viking reported to all stakeholders that the following needed to happen for us to provide a warranty:

the old membrane was to be uplifted,
and a new substrate was to be fitted in accordance with the Viking Substrate Checklist
Viking Envrioclad was to be installed along with heat-welded EJOT bars as the panel mounting system.

Both Harrisons Solar and Roof BOI agreed with Viking’s solution and supported the recommendation to the homeowner, who subsequently gave the go-ahead.

Solution

Due to the remoteness of the property, it was essential that the Roof BOI team planned everything to the exact day. They had to ensure their team was adequately prepared; not only for logistics, but installation of the substrate and membrane.

Over the following two months; battling with Northland’s painful weather, daily installation processes were created to:

allow enough time in one day to remove agreed amounts of old butyl membrane,
install the new plywood substrate,
install new 1.52mm Enviroclad TPO,
install EJOT bars in the correct positions for the solar panels.

Although the installation was relatively straight forward, the Roof BOI team had a few challenges to contend with. Along with having to eliminate ponding from the original internal gutters, they had to carefully establish daily start and finish points to ensure the building remained watertight seeing the home still contained many high value items that could not be damaged. The location also added complexity to the project. It was essential they ensured accurately quantified materials and the correct tools were onsite, as they couldn’t afford to forget anything. Heavy traffic restrictions to site, as well as extreme wind conditions proved problematic as well.

Result

The new roof consisted of 760m² worth of replaced substrate and Enviroclad membrane, 225 lineal metres of Viking EJOT bars; engineered welded aluminium caps with welded spigots and louvres to house the new AC units; extraction vents; and fire places. The Roof BOI team also constructed cap flashings to finish off the perimeter of the building, creating a seamless finish.

The Roof BOI team’s forward planning paid off. The project was executed to perfection! To recognise their outstanding workmanship on this project, they were awarded the Viking Roofpec 2023 Residential Project of the Year trophy at our biennial Approved Applicator conference.

(*It is important to note, when installing solar panels onto Viking EJOT bars, it is essential that the fixing pattern is received from the supplier to ensure EJOT bars are installed in compliance with uplift testing).

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