A New True Oak Roof For Herne Bay Villa

When the owners of a classic Herne Bay villa needed it re-roofed, they wanted a material in keeping with the historic nature of their home.

Corrugated iron was the logical, cost-effective choice that would complement the two-storey weatherboard home’s other period features such as ornate fretwork and balustrades, with the property framed by a white picket fence.

The only problem was an almost flat roof plane at the rear lower level of the home. The pitch of the lower roof was below the minimum Building Code requirement of eight degrees for standard corrugated roofing. Normally this would mean having to re-pitch the roof at considerable cost so standard corrugate could be used or staying with the original roof pitch and using a trapezoidal style of metal roofing, a modern look that would be totally out of character with the historic home.

Roofing installer Darryl Lowndes, of Lowndes Roofing, says, “The back part of the house had a lower pitched roof of about five degrees and the normal way to do the roofing would have been to use a non-symmetrical profile on it but you would have seen that when you looked out the back window upstairs and that would have looked strange.”

Luckily for the owners of the Herne Bay home, Roofing Industries has a patented new product, True Oak® Corrugate, which provides the perfect solution to their problem. True Oak® Corrugate has a greater water carrying capacity and additional spanning capability, and can be installed to a pitch as low as four degrees over living areas.

Roofing Industries’ True Oak® Corrugate is a return to the original, deeper, rounder sinusoidal wave corrugate profile, and takes its name from and improves on the original Gospel Oak Corrugated Iron that was manufactured in the 1800s. 

The distinctive shadowlines and deeper curves transform the look and performance of corrugated roofing.

As well as being stronger, True Oak® is visually different to traditional shallow corrugated profiles, providing period charm to any roofline. In addition to its ability to be installed at a lower roof pitch than standard shallow corrugate, True Oak® can be down-gauged due to its profile strength. 

With warranties that meet New Zealand's Building Code, True Oak® is the strongest residential metal corrugated profile available and because it can be used at greater spans than standard corrugate it has the potential to reduce construction costs.

True Oak® is ideal for residential roofing and cladding, re-roofing of historic buildings with low pitch roofs and verandahs, including curved and bullnosed projects, and can be used for ceiling and walling in horizontal and vertical formats as well as fencing.

Darryl Lowndes says the Herne Bay villa with its mixture of roof levels and roof planes including gables and a bullnose veranda was “quite an involved job”.

“There was a reasonable amount of planning involved but we often do projects like that,” says Darryl. “We were one of the first installers to use True Oak® and I liked it and would definitely use it again. It looks good and it feels a lot firmer underfoot because of the deeper curves.”

For the owners of the Herne Bay Villa, re-roofing their home in True Oak® has preserved its character and provided a simple, cost-effective solution.