Celebrating 30 Years In Business!
We are thrilled to be celebrating our 30th year in business. In the beginning, we could only dream of what the future would bring for us, as we watched those first Huggers get “fabbed” into shape, and shipped out the door.
Now Roof Huggers have been installed on over 100 million square feet of existing metal roofs. No other competitor can make that claim.
When Dale Nelson and his business partner, Red McConnohie started Roof Hugger, their goal was to create something that would allow a new metal roof to be installed over an existing metal roof. It had to work for any new panel, be easy to install, economical and structurally correct. A notched “Zee” seemed to have the most promise. Sounds simple, but there were many challenging issues we had to solve to make Red’s innovative idea, a real and marketable product.
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There was no accepted test protocol when they started, so together with a local engineering firm and local test lab, they created one. A few years later the E-1592 test protocol for metal panels was adopted, setting a new level of sophistication for all the future tests. Actual in place performance tables were established. New corner and edge zone framing assemblies were created to comply with the updated building codes that divided roofs into several distinct zones not just one uniformly loaded roof area.
Construction details had to be changed and standard sizes of the sub-purlins had to be modified. All this was a huge change at the time, affecting all manufacturers and contractors in the industry.
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By 2005, a new wrinkle had come into being: the “Green Movement.” Not only did they have to address structural attachment and panel performance but now they had to design and incorporate energy-saving assemblies, as well as design for rigid or fiberglass insulated assemblies and above sheeting ventilation. They had to understand thermal conductivity, thermal breaks, thermal emissivity, thermal reflectivity, solar heat collection and solar power generation.
The Roof Hugger Systems had to accommodate specific insulation and mechanical systems while meeting all the structural code requirements, which lead to long hours, lots of reading, brainstorming and naturally - more testing.
Roof Huggers with ventilation holes were created, new thermal break assembles had to be mated to the retrofit framing system, access openings for solar collection coils were designed, drag loads, and additional dead loads for photovoltaic systems all had to be considered. All this with an eye toward the ultimate critic……the installer.
The system had to be as intuitive as possible, use standard tools and fasteners and go down quickly.
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Innovative retrofit design work continues today with no end in sight. Roof Hugger’s latest task is to conduct testing that will evaluate how much strength our sub-purlin system adds to the capacity of the existing purlins. Although the codes allow 3 PSF for retrofits, some buildings need additional reinforcement and this testing will identify the extra contribution to purlin strength the Huggers provide.
As we look at the road ahead of us, it is great to know our skilled and knowledgeable staff, headed by Red’s grandson, DJ Highnote, and our parent company, The LSI Group, will continue to work tirelessly to maintain Roof Huggers’ leadership in the metal-over-metal retrofit market. As always, we will keep our eyes on the codes and any new technologies that can provide our customers with the best retrofit products available.
Here's to the next 30 years!........Here...Here
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Chenault Airport Hangers A & B
In August of 2020, Hurricane Laura, a category 4 storm with sustained winds of 150mph, made a direct hit on Chenault Airport in Lake Charles, Louisiana. She left her mark on just about every hanger there. Two of them are, Hanger A and Hanger B. They were severely affected when the extreme winds, literally peeled sections of the roofs right off of the buildings.
These 2 hangers are each 600’ x 374’ for a combined 448,800 sf.
The job to repair these massive buildings, was awarded to Siding & Roofing Systems Inc. (SRS) out of Cincinnati, OH. After evaluating the damages, and determining the best way to secure the new roof, and ensure that it stays in place for the next 40 to 60 years, SRS reached out to Roof Hugger to find out how our metal roof retrofit sub-framing systems can meet their demands.
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The buildings have two different metal roof panel profiles, which usually means there would need to be two different Roof Huggers. After further analysis, it was determined that one custom 4.5” tall Roof Hugger with window cutouts at every 12” o.c. could be used to go over the two different panel profiles.
SRS placed the order for 102,900 lineal feet of the custom parts which is just shy of 20 miles of Roof Huggers! That is a tall order in this time when steel is hard to come by, however we manage our stock of steel carefully, always anticipating future projects, so when the time came for the production to ramp up, we had available to us the quantity of steel necessary to deliver this job. No job is too big or too small. We pride ourselves on being able to workout the best Solutions, and Deliver for our customers. Go to our website and find out what we can do for you. www.RoofHugger.com.
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