Mr Roofer

An interesting morning dealing with quite a number of new customer enquiries.

One customer told me he was placing his order with us on the basis that not only did we provide a prompt and competitive quote but because we never once engaged in rubbishing our competition. He had contacted 5 other companies and all had without exception “slagged” each other off when he mentioned who he was getting quotes from. We had not done that, far from it he said, we recommended several spray foam companies that the customer might like to deal with if we could not help. Hopefully, as the spray foam polyurethane industry matures there will be less silly behaviour and all companies will service an expanding and competitive market without the need to rubbish each other. Rubbishing in fact just serves to rubbish the industry.

Why some companies feel it necessary to rubbish their competitors, their own industry in fact, is beyond me. It is certainly not intelligent. Perhaps they do it in a misguided sense that it will help them win the order. But it seldom does amongst increasingly more educated buyers, buyers who have done their homework and know what they are buying and from who; the company’s reputation and standards. I know how I feel when someone starts to rubbish the competition, I turn off completely and work on the basis that they would say that but it will not negatively influence my decision against anyone they rubbish. In fact it influences my decision against the company doing the rubbishing. If they are so confident in their product and service they provide why do they feel it will positively influence me to buy from them when they try to rubbish the competition? It won’t and it doesn’t.

We work on the basis of trying to help our customers understand the product polyurethane spray foam, what it can do and can’t do, what applications are suitable and what are not, what benefits and the payback they will get, the costings and always striving to give excellent value for money and a very competitive quote for any work that the customer may require. Rubbishing our competition fits in nowhere here, in fact our competition, the quality decent companies we know of will be recommended if we cannot do the work within the customer’s timescales, and sometimes we can’t because of order book commitments. This helps the whole industry and gives a positive perception to the customer. Everyone is a winner even when we don’t do the work.

So, what rubbish it is to try to start to rubbish your competition.

It seems this is the season when condensation rules. We have received a record number of enquiries this winter from customers plagued with condensation problems.

A developer in Romford had built new apartment units in the autumn and had followed the architect’s designs throughout. The roof called for powder coated steel sheets and the insulation in this building was designed to be installed at loft ceiling level to meet the building regulations for U value. All well and good, plans passed etc. The buildings had been erected in the autumn and new owners had started to move in during December and January.

The first the developer knew that there was a problem was when one of the very first owners to move in complained of water staining on his new ceiling in the bedroom about 3 weeks after moving in. A week later another new owner complained of staining on the ceiling and then another. One could be isolated, two could be a coincidence but three water staining complaints is definitely a trend! On inspection it was found that the fibre wool insulation was completely sodden, totally wet through. At first a roof leak was suspected but it became apparent that the roof was watertight and that the real cause of all the damp was condensation.

Condensation is caused when water vapour within the air meets a surface at lower temperature and reduces the average energy of the water vapour within the air such that condensation occurs. On a steel sheet which has high conductivity, the steel will drag the air temperature down sufficiently where air meets the steel sheets such that any water vapour within the air condenses out.

So, with a large steel roof a major design fault had been incorporated within the building despite the loft area seemingly being adequately ventilated. The ventilation was never going to be sufficient to cope with the speed that the large expanse of steel was sucking the warmth out of the air. As air temperature drops the ability of water to remain vapour is reduced and it will condensate out typically first on the coldest surface, in our case the steel roof. As the average air temperature dropped near the steel roof water droplets formed and dripped off the steel into the mineral wool insulation below. The mineral wool acted as a sponge and transmitted the water down into the ceiling boards. Where after some time the ceiling plaster board sucks in the wet and stains appear on the underside.

So we know what the problem is and what is causing the condensation problem but what is the solution? Well the problem was easily remedied by providing an anti-condensation coating of polyurethane spray foam. The foam was sprayed at 120 degrees and 600 psi to ensure an excellent bonding with the steel. Polyurethane is such an excellent insulator that air and steel within the loft the steel are separated and the foam presents a “warm” surface and so water vapour will not condense on it. We also recommended that the steel joists used in the roof construction were similarly coated since they will produce sufficient cold bridging to cause condensation to form on them. Our advice was accepted.

And the water staining on the plasterboard? Well no easy solution other than take down all the boards and put new ceilings up. Once plasterboard gets soaked the boards looses strength and will eventually bow and possible drop down, not something a new home owner would be prepared to tolerate on a new house.

A customer called me today to point out a web advertisement going out under Google Adwords. These are the adverts you see as “sponsored links”, code for Google has been paid to display these adverts by the company concerned in the search results. Google get paid every time someone clicks on the sponsored link by charging the advertiser a click rate for the search term used to find that advertisement. Google Adwords is big business for Google and each advertiser is deliberately set up in competition with each other in having to bid a click rate fee for the search terms they wish to use. The ads you see at the very top of Google have simply paid the most for that search term; it has nothing at all to do with relevancy to the searcher which is why you get taken to none spray foam sites as well because they use spray foam search terms.

Well, I took a look at the web site involved, a new kid on the block in terms of polyurethane spray foam, never heard of them and nor has anyone else except perhaps the few sub contractors this company must obviously be using. To quote some of their web site: “Class 0 (higher than statutory Class 1) coatings available for additional fire resistance”

Well, I’ve never in all my time knew that Class 1 was statutory, well done new kid for educating the rest of the spray foam industry. In point of fact Class 1 simply designates that the foam meets the British Standard (there is a similar US standard also designated Class 1) Surface Spread of Flame when tested to BS 476 Part 7. There is nothing statutory about a foam having to meet Class 1 which explains why a number of contractors import cheap continental polyurethane foams (the resin or polyol part mainly imported from Spain) that do not offer fire resistance to BS Class 1. That is okay as long as the customer knows what they are buying but we have long suspected at Rooftherm that the customer has been kidded.

It is easy enough to tell if you have fire resistant foam, simply take a small sample of the contractors foam, place it outside on a concrete slab and with a lighted taper try and set light to it. The result you get will tell you what sort of foam you are dealing with! A fire resistant foam will slightly char and smoulder and when you take the taper away there should be no flame on the foam. The foam resists the spread of flame. I’ll leave to your imagination what happens in the case of a non fire resistant foam except to give a big health tip, stand well back!

“Achieves U/values from 0.981 to 0.160”. What does? The foam? U value is governed by two factors, the substrate and the thickness of foam applied to the substrate. Given the substrate, increase the thickness of foam and you lower the U value. And the U value under Building Regulations is a composite of the structure so it becomes more complicated to calculate the U value, it is not simply a question of a certain thickness of foam always gives a certain U value, it does not!

“BUFCA approved contractors” As far as I am aware BUFCA is an independent contractors association, basically pay your dues and you are in the club. It does not have a Royal Charter which would really give it some meaning. BUFCA has nice ideas but I have yet to see them take sanction against any member. But to come back to the point, they do not approve or disapprove of contractors who work in the polyurethane spray foam industry. Looking at the list of members I can only see two that are accredited to ISO 9001. This really gives the game away; this firm is using sub contractors and does not do the work itself. Obviously they do not sub contract the work for free so you must pay more than if you contracted the contractor. I would be more impressed if they said they only use contractors accredited to ISO 9001, the two forms so accredited do not do sub contract work. The conclusion? You will be using non ISO accredited contractors. And this is the standard that the rest of British Industry and the Construction Industry subscribes to.

Just in passing I see that the “company” has a PO Box number address which actually turns out to be the PO Box number address of a media and web Design Company. Not a good omen especially if you need to get hold of the owners. The site also uses pictures I am sure I have seen on other contractor sites. The free phone number seems customer friendly enough but my money would be on a redirect.

I could go on a really take apart the claims made but sufficient has been said that despite seeing a very nice looking web site complete with flash effects, who are you really dealing with? A company that has no real address and no real contact telephone number and a company that must inevitably charge you more to save since it is totally reliant on non ISO 9001 accredited contractors. Oh, I nearly forgot the best bit, a “company” (because for sure I don’t really know what it is, a web design company generating leads perhaps?) not in “BUFCA” but promising us that it only uses BUFCA approved contractors”. Go on BUFCA, sort that one out.

Google Adwords is still the wild west in terms of no real control over the legitimacy and factual content of web sites that the ads lead to. This is a striking case in point. Even sadder is the fact that it is within my own industry since all this will do is destroy consumer confidence in dealing with the legitimate spray foam companies.

I don’t know about anyone else but I imagine they have the same problem I have. I get bad “good” results when I do an internet search using Google.

I’ll explain what I mean. Whenever I do a Google search I get interesting web sites come up that look to have what I am interested in. For example, we have been looking for a new pick up today so I try the ones I am interested in, Ford Thunder, Nissan Navara, Mitsubishi Animal and so on. Put in “Nissan Navara pickup” which seems the obvious search term to use if you are interested in one of those and you get a list of promising web sites to look at that might give you what you want, a review of the vehicle, features, models, prices, dealers etc. And indeed you do get this but sprinkled in with the results are far to many of those “shop here and click on me.com” sites where all you get is a list of other web sites that might have the information you seek. The trouble is they tempt you in and then you find your time has been wasted because the site does not actually contain the information you want but just presents a list of other web sites.

These “click-on-me.com” sites are more to do with the web site owner wanting to generate click through revenue. Google pays the site owner a percentage fee of the advertising revenue generated. Revenue is generated from the advertiser every time someone clicks on the advertising web site link. An advertiser places an advert with Google which then gets listed on participating Google network advertising sites. Basically, web site owners who want Google ads to appear on their web site. The ads also appear when you do a web search under “sponsored links” on Google’s search page, you see the ads at the very top and at the right hand side of the page.

Now it would not be so bad if these “click-on-me.com” sites added some value like actually collating and presenting the information in a more informative way than the raw Google search results pages. But they do not; simply give a whole bunch of listed web links, each one earning the web site owner money if you happen to click on any of the links. These are what I call bad “good” since at first site you think you have found a good web site to look at. And these sites are coming up in searches far too often, adding questionable value to your search experience meanwhile lapping up advertiser revenue for nothing because I get the hell out of these sites once I see what they are about. Some almost trick you into clicking onto them and then try and get you to click a bunch of links that earn them money.

So, I have had quite a frustrating day visiting far too many “click-on-me.com” sites. Then it dawned on me, what is the experience of web searchers looking for the products and services we supply? Not good I am afraid. Again, web sites have been built with the sole intention of earning advertising revenue from click throughs rather than adding value to the searcher.

Do a Google for “Polyurethane” and you’ll find all kinds of sites that are basically there to generate revenue for the web site owner. Google clearly needs to control this spread of web sites that are nothing more than link sites or genuine sites will be lost in the morass.