Polycarbonate Roofing- What brands

I have to replace quite a bit of the old crappy fibreglass roofing, somewhere near 100 lineal metres. Laserlite is of course the "known" brand, but I was wondering whether some of the cheaper ones are as good?

Home hardware recently had solartuff polycarbonate roofing on sale for $9 per metre, and laserlite is around $14.50/m. Has anyone had any experience with these cheaper options. Do they really work out cheaper long term?

I spoke to one of the blokes at Mitre 10 a while back when they had solartuff on special, and he said that it was rubbish and cheap and nasty. He said it needed extra battens to support it. Extra battens doesn't worry me much, I have a cheap supply of timber.

Would I be disappointed by trying to save $500+ dollars? Will it cost more in the long run? Or is it just a lesser known brand, with less profit margin for the seller?

I don't know about other brands of roofing (I used Laserlite), but one tip I have got is make sure you use the screws with the attached "saw" blade (for cutting the 10mm hole as the screw goes in).

I think they are called one-step screws (or something like that). They make the hole (pun intended) job a lot easier and quicker.

Sorry for not answering your question ... but I hope this info helps.

The original and the best is probably "Suntuff". This was first made in Israel.

When I was with Lysaght we supplied all the Polycarbonate Roofing for Kerry Packers stables at Ellerston Station and the architech specified the Suntuff. There was over $40,000 worth of the product used at the time but when it first came out they didn't have any competition.

We did several tests on the product and amongst them was a drop test where we had the poly fixed as if it was on a roof and dropped a sand bag on it the weight of a man to see if it would support or go through and to see how much it would tear the screw holes as they didn't want any safety mesh under it and we didn't want to be responsible for somebody going through and getting killed or injured.

It passed with hardly any tearing of the screw holes.

Another test we did to test the memory of the profile was to drive over it with a fork lift and it just came back to its profile.

When Laserlite came out it was considered the lowend product of the market but can't comment on it now.

Thanks for the replies, I'll have a look into the suntuff stuff and see what sort of price we're looking at. I like to do the job properly the first time, and cost is secondary to quality, as "cheap" can often cost a lot more, but cheap does not always equal inferior. Have I confused anyone yet?

Cheers, Dean

What did you finish up using? I am curious because I got a quote today for a pergola (wood, of course) from a company which uses Ampelite Solarsafe at around $14 / metre. I hadn't looked at the price of Laserlite for a while and found that it has gone past $20. Given the strength of the Australian $, I was abit surprised.

Les Harris

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Originally Posted by Les Harris

What did you finish up using? I am curious because I got a quote today for a pergola (wood, of course) from a company which uses Ampelite Solarsafe at around $14 / metre. I hadn't looked at the price of Laserlite for a while and found that it has gone past $20. Given the strength of the Australian $, I was abit surprised.

Les Harris

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Hi Les, I haven't actually done it yet, I've been flat out trying to get a unit built. I expect I'll go with laserlite 2000, which has been "on special" for at least two months for $12.50 per metre at both local hardware stores - Home Hardware and Gunns Mitre 10. The price may be for Gunns only, and not a general "mitre 10" price. Bunnings have been advertising it at $14.50p/m for months as well.

HTH, Dean

We finalized the contract this morning and we have decided to go with the Laserlite Apollo in Metallic Bronze. The final choice was dictated by the low heat transmission figure plus the appearance, which blends well with the timber frame and the existing Mulga green (Weathershield colour) in use on the ajacent fences. There is another thread running concurrently on Colorbond versus Laserlite. It's getting a bit heated (pun intended) but there is some useful information in it.

Les Harris