My Beach Hut roof

[michael]

Not strictly period property but dose anybody know anything about beach huts? I’ve just acquired (bought) a 10ft x 16ft cabin located on the seafront. It’s fairly new, about three years old and of treated timber construction. Some of the other cabins around me are up to 70 years old. The timbers that make up the main frame of my cabin( or shed) measure up at about 70mm x 45mm. The verticals are spaced between 700mm and 800 mm apart and stand a little under 2m high. The outside skin is horizontal timber cladding.
On top of this construction there is a pitched timber plank roof probably at about 135 degrees and this is covered in roofing felt with a few additional timber battens nailed on top to try and keep the felt fixed down. I’m not too happy with this roof and I can see it being very susceptible to damage from the elements i.e. felting being ripped off the roof by strong wind and gales off the sea.
I have a fair quantity of old 20”x10” roofing slates left over from a past job (the heavy thick variety) and I was wondering if the above cabin would be a strong enough construction to take that weight of these slates. It can certainly take my weight as I’ve been on the cabin roof today re fixing a batten that had come loose but I was wondering if the slates would make the structure top heavy. If I go ahead and fix the slates, I was considering leaving the roofing felt in place and just battening and slating straight on top
Any comments or ideas would be appreciated.

 

[ljn]

Not really relevant, but this "beach hut" is covered in thick rubber, like a wet suit.
It looks amazing

http://www.simonconder.co.uk/res_dung3.html

 

[MdB]

I would be worried about the slates being blown off I think.

 

[michael]

Yes ljn, I know the rubber beach house. It’s at Dungeness, not too far from me. The price tag on this quite small dwelling however would buy you a reasonable sized property in London. I looked at another property at Dungeness last year. It was a wreck fit only for demolition. A small single story bungalow made out of asbestos boarding with asbestos tiles on the roof most of which were missing, large gaping holes in the floor, overgrown with weed and a guide price of £65,000. I believe there were hundreds of interested parties who each had to put in a sealed bid. Needless to say it sold for considerably more than the guide price. The architect designed Rubber house is in a higher league again. I wouldn’t even like to guess the price.

My beach hut is far more humble. I live in Hastings East Sussex and following my original post I’ve been down to the seafront to take a look at the tall black net huts in the fishing quarter. These are something of a landmark in Hastings. I notice that the roofs on these ancient tall slender timber buildings comprise of either slates, clay tiles or clinker built timber. These buildings are quite tall (maybe three stories high) each covering an area of perhaps only 12ft x12ft. They don’t seem to blow over and the roofs seem to stay in tack no matter what the weather, so I’m not sure if MdB’s comment about the slates blowing off should be a concern? Have you seen this happen elsewhere MdB?

 

[MdB]

Slates give an edge for the wind / spray etc to get underneath. The beach huts near to my parents got demolished recently in a storm but that may have had something to do with being hit by large pebbles from the beach.... Slates could well be fine though as I'm certainly not an expert.

 

[Lime]

I've never seen a beach hut with tiles.
That makes me think that they wouldn't work too well.
Also some beach front areas exclude certain materials being used on the roof. (looks presumably)
From what I've seen of beach huts over the years expect to carry out work of some sort every year (softwood rots very quickly) and if you have problems with vandals always expect to see a pile of cinders when you next visit it.
The sea wind is able to blow away virtually anything so perhaps there is a virtue in making the roof easy to repair rather than very strong and difficult.

 

[Penners]

I've seen a shed roof covered in butyl rubber, glued down. I've no long-term personal experience of this, but it looked like an excellent job. The butyl is really tough, and as long as you make sure the edges are really securely anchored, I reckon it would last for yonks.

I agree with MdB about slates. The hut roof isn't large enough for the upper courses to apply any real weight to the lower ones, and I suspect the first real gale would see them off.

 

[chuckey]

Two points :- Is the roof trussed, I think it could splay the walls if not. Can you buy/make clips to fasten the edges of the tiles down? If they are not bedded 100%, the vibrations from the wind could cause the edge ones to break at the nail hole and then blow away.
Frank

 

[ljn]

Near the rubber house, next to the nuclear power plant (so no need for green nonsense like solar panels) In need of a bit of TLC http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Dungeness-Beach-Property-Kent_W0QQitemZ280253651259QQcmdZViewItem?IMSfp=TL080807162a3329 looks like good ventilation has prevented the timber structure from rotting.

I wouldn't go for tiles on a beach house. There is bound to be the storm of the century that will blow them off.

 

[Penners]

There is bound to be the storm of the century that will blow them off.

Yes - those "storms of the century" that we seem to get every six months, nowadays.

 

[michael]

OK no slates then but I'm still wondering how the slate or clay tiled roofs on the tall Hastings net drying huts (net shops) manage to survive so well. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Net_shops_Hastings.jpg
They too are susceptable to sea gales?
As an alternative, I’ve noticed that one or two of the beach huts near to mine have a kind of corrugated metal roof, not the old wavy ‘corrugated iron’ but a kind of linear box section type corrugation. Any ideas what the modern equivalent of a corrugated roof is nowadays? Probably some kind of coated or treated alloy I would have thought. I would ask the hut owners but with the weather being so bad there’s been no one around to ask.

 

[Gervase]

Plenty of places still sell corrugated iron, but Onduline seems to be the modern preference.

 

[chuckey]

I read an article in Model Engineers Workshop about a chap constructing a garden shed out of profiled and insulated sheeting. The supplier he used was:- http://www.slecladding.co.uk. Its a good online site with masses of info.
Frank

 

[Feltwell]

Plenty of places still sell corrugated iron, but Onduline seems to be the modern preference.

I've used Onduline and it's good stuff, but very flexible - in an exposed location you'd have to very careful to keep the "long" edges well fastened down, more so than with iron. It's also not very vandal proof, you could kick a hole in it with relative ease. If you do use it the official fixings are horrendously expensive, and they use ring shank nails - you can get clear plastic caps from Screwfix much cheaper, and fix them with screws.

 

[ljn]

Could the the tall Hastings net drying huts be less exposed to strong winds because of the steep cliffs behind?
Or perhaps the tiles are designed or fixed in a particular way. I know that in Thanet, tiles and slates often get displaced during storms. Even last night I had to get a bucket out.

 

[biffvernon]

Our beach hut is very much as you describe, Michael, though much older. I stay with the traditional materials: felt and battens, and traditional methods: regular repair of damage. It kinda goes with the territory.

 

[Penners]

It's interesting that roofing felt is now regarded as "traditional". I wonder what was used for huts and shed before it came along - a thick slosh of pitch over wooden boards, perhaps?

And I wonder when roofing felt was invented.

 

[Flyfisher]

Possibly not a definitive history, but according to this article - http://www.maguirebrothers.co.uk/products/felt.htm - roofing felt has been around since "time immemorial", the Californian gold rush or post-WW2, so take your pick!

 

[Penners]

roofing felt has been around since "time immemorial

I'm never sure when time memorial ended and time immemorial began. Certainly before I went to Big School, I suspect.

 

[biffvernon]

All beach huts on our bit of coast are post the 1953 flood. The original (I think) roof covering was felt that was shaped to resemble overlapping tiles. Others have curved sheets of corrugated asbestos that give a distinctive silhouette:

Here's is a more modern one, contructed last summer for the Bathing Beauties Festival: