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MARLEY ETERNIT MATERIALS PROVIDE CRINAN WITH SAFE HARBOUR

Fibre cement roofing and cladding materials from Marley Eternit met a host of specification criteria for the redevelopment of a boat yard on the wild west coast of Scotland.
Marley Eternit’s Farmscape roofing was specified for the main boat shed roof for its vapour permeability, aesthetics, longevity and cost effectiveness while the company’s Cedral Weatherboard was used for its non-combustibility on a wall of a bunkhouse for occasional visiting specialist staff and boat crew.
Both products were specified for the boat yard at Crinan near Lochgilphead in Argyll by local architect Robert Wakeham who has used Marley Eternit’s profiled roofing many times before on domestic outbuildings but had not used the Cedral weatherboard before.
Robert’s brief was from Crinan Boatyard Ltd, engineers and boatwrights specialising in yachts, leisure craft, fishing boats, work boats, small ferries and general mechanical engineering and fabrication services.
It was to redevelop the existing boat shed, which had reached the end of its working life, with a 1,200m² clear span building offering maximum possible headroom for boats and to include new workshops and offices over the existing chandlery, all under one roof.
The boat yard is based on a sheltered beach in a narrow valley close to the western end of the Crinan Canal basin, a natural site for the development in the late 20th Century of the boat slip, yard and workshop facilities, although the canal is a scheduled ancient monument and the basin a Conservation Area.
Because the site is so constricted, the adjoining hillside had to be excavated to provide space for the engineering workshop alongside the slipway, with the boatwright’s shop on the floor above (at road level) and the materials store above that.
The original boat shed was a twin portal structure with roof ridges at right angles to the slipway – ideal for side slipping boats before the roof was extended over the slipway but subsequently severely restricting the heights of boats that could be slipped, and with internal columns obstructing boat movements within the shed.
The new steel portal frame of the existing chandlery adjoining the boatshed at the head of the slipway was found to be capable of supporting an additional storey, enabling relocation of the offices from a remote, timber-framed and clad building to above the chandlery.
The headroom for the new office storey determined the overall building roofline, with the ridge centred over the slipway, offset from the centre of the boat shed and providing sufficient headroom for three storeys of workshops on the inland side flanking the public road, while sloping down on the opposite, more exposed west side furthest from the slipway.
This minimised the wall height facing the sea while maximising the roof slope available for the addition of profiled translucent rooflights arranged to spell Crinan when viewed from offshore and from the air.

The project was phased over three years to minimise disruption to the boat yard operations and the design and materials specified to account for the site’s prominent location in a very high-quality coastal landscape. Planners had originally requested a green roof and insisted on dark blue wall cladding but Robert’s faith in Marley Eternit’s profiled sheeting won through for the roof.
“In a cool, humid marine environment, there is a significant risk of condensation on the underside of the roof. The boat shed can’t be enclosed at the slipway entrance, isn’t required to be heated and the cost of an insulated roof was unjustifiable. Fibre cement significantly reduced the risk of condensation problems which would have been unacceptable for a single-skin metal roof,” he said.
“A light tone or strong colour for the relatively large roof area would also have been unacceptably prominent. The Marley Eternit Farmscape through-coloured grey roofing was dark enough to blend into the locale, offered a longer life than an applied surface finish, and was likely to be less light reflective in wet weather than colour coated metal roof sheeting.
“It was ideal – a simple, economical, easy to fix, long-life roofing material for a project where the roof would be a very prominent element. The profile and the colour relate well to the scale of both the profiled metal boat shed wall cladding and the vertical timber board office cladding while the colour contrasts well with the translucent rooflight areas to ensure the word Crinan remains legible even in dull weather.”
“It contributes very significantly to the overall effect of the project and the client considers it a very satisfactory roofing material.”
Robert added: “We faced a more onerous fire protection requirement with the change of use from office to bunkhouse and the proximity of the outboard motor workshop to one gable demanded incombustible cladding.
“As we wanted to try and retain the distinct timber boarded character of this building in contrast to the profiled sheet cladding of all the other buildings, fibre cement Weatherboard was ideal as it could be stained with the existing timber cladding on the other walls (none of which face other buildings) to maintain a reasonably homogenous appearance.”