Hi all,

We are currently thrashing through the internet estate agents looking for the ideal home. One reference that comes up often is to a 'de uralite' roof and being naturally apprehensive I've tried searching to find out about it, and whether there are any undesirable aspects to it like some previous roofing materials. All I can find is information about it as a mineral, virtually nothing about its use. Anybody out there any wiser?

Thanks.

Karen & John

methinks you mean duralite .... although this is a US site, it gives you some info

http://www.monierlifetile.com/produc...cfm?regionid=2

Never seen it, most roofs are concrete and usually covered with a thick felt we used to call Nurolite in UK, or a spray on type of expanding foam and then tiled, the tiles are just for decoration, they could never be watertight due to the lack of lap and the pitch of the roofs ;-)

Hi guys,

Thanks for your comments, it's definitely uralite though, as in "with rendered walls, under a "de uralite" roof, and concrete beams" and "and the roof is of concrete construction under a de Uralite covering". It comes up on quite a lot of the properties we find (semi rural villa/finca types).

As I said I can find reference to the mineral uralite, and to a company "British Uralite" which used to produce asbestos (hence the question). May be that the names you suggest are trade names for variation of it's use? I have also seen it advertised for use in all sorts of buildings. I did think of contacting a supplier - but maybe they might be a little biased?

Karen & John

Hello able_safe,

"uralite" or "uralita" means asbestos. Many roofs in Spain were covered with asbestos.

Best regards

David

Ah well, I'm off for a night on the tiles tonight so I'll let you know if anything else comes to mind

Ah, thanks David.

We recently had our roof replaced. The original was in traditional cortijo style - canes, mud, etc and tiles. The replacement was concrete beams, bardillos(?), (which are flat honeycomb terracotta bricks about 2" thk), this was concreted over and the roof tiles (interlocking) placed on top of this. Weather in November proved that it worked.
Our builder talked of another material we could use on the other roofs where we want to retain the original beams - this was a "Polystyrene" type of pellet, which would be mixed into the concrete for laying on the roof and hence much lighter. We have yet to try it as the 2md phase of re-roofing will have to wait for this years bonus!

Hi Clive and Karen (beginning to worry now, there seem to be an awful lot of Karen's in Spain). The new roof you described (beams, blocks and tiles) seems to be the new 'traditional' roof in Spain. We're quite happy with that type. I think the uralite must have been an intermediary style.

Karen & John

We had a traditional roof restored, we had new wooden beams, using the old bricks that were hand made and new laths , our builders restored the traditional roof with a mixture of old and new roof tiles.
The house has a very traditional look and the dark beams and the terracotta bricks look really good.

Did he waterproof the concrete with anything ?

Don't know for certain, only saw photographs as described above. But not far from us there are a great deal of new builds going up. I have seen them using the same methodologies for theirs, but have only seen them concreting over, then roof tiles straight on top. Tiles are like ours "modern" versions that interlock together rather than the "traditional" tiles that are crescent moons and just fit one over the other.