On site assistance
All of Maitlands customers can benefit from
our free of charge on site assistance team who have over 20 years experience
in the Conservatory industry, and have worked for the Ultraframe technical
department all over the UK.
A selection of some of the services
they offer on site.
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Site Surveying.
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Site remedial with full reporting.
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Site training.
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On site product training.
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Difficult design advice and surveying.
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Technical information on all
aspects of Conservatory product, design & installation.
Tailor made DVD design
Maitlands Customers also benefit
from a free service of a full retail DVD with their own branding and
installations displayed with printed disks and covers.
Web Site design and hosting
We offer our customers free web
site design and hosting with up to 10 personnel e-mail address, we
will design for our customers a web site in their corporate design
and logo's with full hosting. And its all free.
Graphic Design
We have our own graphic designer
who can create logo's, mailshots, advertising, all free of charge
for our customers.
Unique selling products
We have a growing portfolio of
products unique to Maitlands customers which we feel give the edge
over their competitors, and we have staff dedicated at consistently
adding to our product range. Some of our products for example.
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Tiewire system (see our news
page)
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Foiled internal corners and radius
ends (only available from Maitlands).
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Ridge radio with MP3 connection.
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One piece all aluminium muntin bar.
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Colour brown and caramel guaranteed not to
fade for 10 years.
A Simple Guide to Structural
Integrity of Roofs
A conservatory roof is a complex piece of
engineering, and this guide attempts to explain the various forces acting on
it in simple terms. I am not a structural engineer - this a guide only and
should not be used as the basis for any calculations. As always, if in doubt
seek professional advice before deciding if a design is structurally sound.
Forces
There are several major forces acting on a roof:
- The downward vertical load of the rafters,
glazing and worst-case snow load
- The upward vertical load from worst-case wind
(as the wind speed increases it creates a vacuum effect which pulls the sheets
upwards)

In order to determine if the roof is suitable for
its site location we need following information:
- The glazing weight per square metre
- The maximum expected snow load per square metre
(site specific)
- The strength of the supporting rafters
- The maximum deflection acceptable for the chosen
glazing (which is lower for glass than polycarbonate)
The site specific information is often looked up
from a location map - contact Maitlands for more details.
Failures
A conservatory will begin to fail for a number of
reasons:
- Glazing cannot deflect beyond the maximum
possible, and cracks or disintegrates
- Fixings (screws, expansion bolts etc) cannot
sustain the loads upon them
- Cappings can no longer resist the loads upon
then and become detached
- The ring beams deflects causing doors or openers
to jam
Remedies
If the given design is found to be insufficiently
strong there are a number of remedies, including:
- Use stronger rafters to reduce glazing
deflection
- Use tie bars or tie bar removal kits to reduce
ridge deflection
- Use a portal frame
- Use alternative glazing which is lighter or has
a higher deflection co-efficient
Tie Bars
As the weight supported by the ridge increases
(because either the span is large or the ridge length is long, or both), there
will be a large force pushing the ridge down and the rafters outwards. When this
load exceeds safe limits, the ring beam will start to be pushed outwards, which
in the worst case could result in a roof collapse. A tie bar will prevent this
outward movement by "tying" the rafters together. Note that the vertical element
of a tie bar is simply to keep the bars level - all of the work is done by the
horizontal members. Very large roofs may require two or more tie bars.

Use of a tie bar is illustrated below:

Portal Frames
A portal frame provides a structural support upon
which the roof sits. Typically portals are made of a steel or aluminium tubing,
which is either welded or mechanically jointed. The portal is designed to
transfer the calculated loads to fixed concrete footings. As a result the entire
structure will by much stronger and capable of supporting a larger roof. A
simple portal frame is shown below:

The roof would sit on this portal as shown here:

Automating Remedies
Resolving some of these structural issues
manually can be very time-consuming and often requires the services of a
structural engineer. Better software systems can recommend solutions
automatically for many designs although complex designs will still need to be
referred to an expert. In some cases there can be several ways of solving
specific structural issues, and this is where the experience of a qualified
engineer is invaluable.
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