Why A New Product?

The roofing industry, like all other industries, is constantly looking for the next innovative product that will revolutionize the industry and give someone a competitive advantage.

In addition, there is a faction of the architectural community that desires to always be on the cutting edge of technology in building design. These designers want to be the first to successfully incorporate a new or improved product into their next design.

Manufacturers also are constantly trying to improve their existing products to develop more cost-effective processes and increase profits or, as was the case with asbestos, replace an ingredient effectively banned from use by government regulations.

During the early 1980s, asbestos use was all but eliminated by government restrictions and bad publicity regarding the health threats reported from asbestos exposure. Asbestos is a natural mineral that is compatible with Portland cement; blended with Portland cement and aggregate, the material was manufactured into various products made from sheet goods. While they were in use, asbestos-cement products provided long-term, successful performance on steep-slope roof systems and as exterior wall cladding. Many asbestos-cement roofing products were manufactured to imitate slate and wood shakes.

With the loss of asbestos as a reinforcing medium, the roofing industry needed to find a substitute. Various polymeric materials, newsprint and wood fiber waste products were among the substitutions the industry considered. If the industry could effectively continue to manufacture the same product using essentially the same materials with a different reinforcing medium, it could continue to deliver products to an established marketplace. The new products also had to have price points similar to the asbestos-cement products so they’d have a significant cost advantage over natural slate and tile.

How A Product Starts

As manufacturers developed the new materials, it appears the inherent properties of the replacement fibers were largely ignored in the developmental research.

Although the exact amount and quality of such research is largely unknown, the performance record of the fiber-cement materials proves it was fatally limited to testing of products in the short run and that long-term exposure tests were omitted while the industry hoped the products would work as well as the products they were replacing.

Limited to short-term programs, performance testing did not examine the materials’ long-term behavior characteristics. When the short-term test programs demonstrated the “new and improved” products could provide characteristics similar to the products they were replacing, the materials were introduced to the market. Most products were marketed with long-term warranties, implying the materials would perform as well as the asbestos-cement materials they were replacing.

Offering new and untried products with 30- to 50-year warranties left users with an essentially untested product that ultimately failed within the first few years of installation by disintegrating on roofs when exposed to normal weather conditions. When such failures occurred, the industry was unwilling or unable to make good on its obligations because of the large financial burden of virtually a total failure of all products delivered and installed.

We are not aware whether the roofing industry used any reputable testing agency that was qualified to determine the products’ future viability. Although short-term “accelerated” tests have only a spotty record, the products’ early widespread failures indicate the developmental research was superficial and certainly inadequate and did not identify the ultimate mode of failure. The industry seemed to resist acknowledging the products were defective even after extensive failures occurred.

When defects became apparent, we suspect manufacturers were as surprised and uninformed as their customers, installation contractors. Our experience shows that in the rising flood of failures, some manufacturers resorted to blaming installers for the problems and refusing to make good for the direct and obvious consequential damage. Some manufacturers even battled in court, trying to refute the clear evidence they had inserted a product unfit for use into the stream of commerce. The manufacturers appeared to hope the problem would go away by itself.