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BUILDING CONNECTION
SUMMER 2016
IT’S TIME TO ‘FASCIA’ THE TRUTH
I
t has always amazed me that roofing companies are on
a race to the bottom when it comes to the installation
of metal fascia and gutter. Metal fascia is such a small
part of every home but it is such an important link in the
construction process.
Metal fascia was first introduced into the construction
industry in the early 1980s and at the time a lot of people
said it would never be accepted and that no one would want
it. Here we are, 30-plus years later, and I would say that over
90% of all houses built today feature metal fascia.
Why? The answer is obvious: timber fascia has to be
painted, repainted, and then repainted again only for it
to eventually rot. Colorbond® fascia is produced with the
Colorbond coating already on it and it will usually outlast the
house that it is installed on.
Builders know that the fascia and gutter is a linchpin in the
construction process because it is such a quick installation
and most standard installations are completed in 2-3 hours,
but if for some reason it doesn’t happen, you will find that
it holds up everything scheduled after, including roofing,
bricks, eaves, cladding etc. It is also a really important
aesthetic component to most houses these days as it
frames the look of the entire house.
In the early 1980s roofing companies were installing
metal fascia and gutter for almost the same price they
are now, around $27 per lineal metre in Melbourne, but the
rollformer i.e. Stramit, Stratco, Lysaght etc. have raised
their costs by 150% for the material needed.
The installation rates have also risen by roughly 150%.
That’s not to mention that the overhead and taxes cost
have gone up in that time. At the current rate metal fascia
is the most unprofitable product being sold in the domestic
building marketplace.
In 1983 the installation equation would have looked
something like this:
(Please See Table 1)
Looking at this the profit percentage is probably far too
METAL FASCIA HAS BECOME A BIG COMPONENT OF MOST NEW HOME BUILDS; HOWEVER, RISING MATERIAL COSTS
HAVE MEANT THAT PROFITS ARE SIMPLY NO LONGER THERE.
PETER COLL
EXPLAINS.
Fascia is a linchpin in the construction process.
WHY HAVE ROOFING COMPANIES
ALLOWED A PRODUCT TO BECOME
ESSENTIALLY PROFITLESS?
high, I would love it but I am never going to achieve it.
This is what it look like on today’s calculations.
(Please
See Table 2)
NOTE: these prices are taken from a quick survey of
rollformer’s and from personal memory and may not be
100% accurate.
So I again ask: why have roofing companies allowed a
product to become essentially profitless? I am guessing
that in a large part this is competition driven. In the early
1980s there were 4 or 5 companies installing metal fascia
in Victoria and they all knew each other and life was mostly
amicable, but as we hit the 1990s this number would have
been in the hundreds and now thousands.
As bigger national companies entered the industry with
better processes and buying power, the price dropped
drastically and the industry followed suit; builders became
accustomed to paying less and less. The 90s also saw
METAL ROOFING 101
PETER COLL