For businesses with ageing asbestos cement roofs, replacing or over-roofing the building fabric can be combined with solar into one project that cuts disruption and creates decades of lower-cost energy.
Thousands of industrial and commercial buildings in the UK still have asbestos cement roofs. Many are now at or beyond their design life: brittle, leaking, thermally poor and increasingly expensive to patch. For the businesses underneath, the roof is a liability — but it is also an opportunity.
Over-roofing installs a new, weatherproof skin directly over the existing asbestos cement sheets. The old roof stays encapsulated and undisturbed, hazardous waste removal is minimised, and the building gets a modern, insulated roof plane with a long design life. That new plane is also the ideal mounting surface for commercial solar PV.
Combining the two works because the same access, scaffolding, craneage and site coordination are needed for both. Doing them separately means paying twice for mobilisation, twice for disruption and twice for management time. Doing them together means one programme, one contractor interface and a single, consolidated warranty route.
The commercial case is stronger than either project in isolation. The solar array offsets the energy the building buys from the grid, while the roof upgrade removes the maintenance liability and improves thermal performance. Finance can be arranged around the combined saving, and the project often stacks up even where solar alone would be marginal.
Not every asbestos roof is suitable. We assess structural capacity, span, loading, internal environment and access before recommending over-roofing. Where removal is the safer or more practical route, we design the replacement roof with solar in mind from the outset — orientation, pitch, fixings and cable routes all considered up front.
For businesses with ageing industrial roofs, the question is no longer just 'when do we fix the roof?' It is 'can we fix the roof and turn it into a generation asset at the same time?' In most cases, the answer is yes — and the combined project is the cleanest, most cost-effective way forward.