Before any roof terrace specification is signed off on a residential or mixed-use development, one developer question is worth asking: if this terrace creates a water ingress problem in five or ten years, what is the liability chain, and who carries it?
On a penetratively-fixed roof terrace, the honest answer is that the liability is distributed across multiple parties – membrane manufacturer, waterproofing contractor, balustrade supplier, structural engineer – none of whom has formally signed off the interface between their work. When failure occurs at that interface, as it predictably does, the liability question becomes a legal dispute. The developer, holding the asset and the leasehold obligations, frequently funds the remediation while the argument plays out.
What BalcoDeck provides instead
One company – Balconette – designs, engineers, manufactures and installs the complete BalcoDeck system. At handover, the developer receives a single Certificate of Compliance covering the structural, wind, fire and building regulations performance of the complete balustrade and deck assembly.
The membrane warranty from the waterproofing contractor sits alongside that certificate, unaffected, because BalcoDeck never touched it. There is one point of accountability for the system performance. The liability question, if it ever arises, has a clear answer.
The specification decision
The difference between a fragmented multi-supplier roof terrace installation and a BalcoDeck installation is not just structural – it is commercial and contractual. The question takes thirty seconds to ask at design stage. The answer determines the liability position for the life of the building.
The full piece on why the right question changes the specification is on balconette.co.uk.
Read the full article on balconette.co.uk
