Any views on Chinese slate?

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blissbaby

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Hello

Any views on Chinese slate? It's considerably cheaper than other slates but I'm guessing there's probably good reason for this! Has anyone used it and have any views on it's performance, or has anyone seen how it weathers over time?

Grateful for any views.

Thanks,

BB
 
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We seem to be in the same situation with chinese slates that we were with spanish slates in the late 80's early 90's in that we seem to be getting the crap that they don't want.

A lot of Chinese slates are dreadful (especially those known as weathering slates) but some are fine, TBH you get what you pay for.
 
Hi. Exactly right you get what you pay for. Chineese slate is a hit and miss. Im a roofing contractor and have been roofing in my family for over 35 years. we did a job in chineese slate to keep cost down for a customer and she understood the consequences. The chineese slate weatherd really light on the parts of the roof which was under the sun. the roof looked terrible and the slate was all colours. i would only recomend chineese slate if you are planning on covering it with solar pannels!
 
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Thanks to you all. It's good to have your comments back up my gut feeling - you pay peanuts and you get monkeys.
Guess we'll just have to save our pennies until we can afford Spanish - or even Scottish or Welsh if we win the lottery.
Thanks again.
BB
 
Just a note to advise that Welsh Slate, which is universally regarded to be the best roofing slate in the World, will only cost about 25% more than reasonable quality Spanish slate, when you add in all other costs.

The material itself is approx twice the price of reasonable quality Spanish - Welsh Slate will last at least 100 years, probably a lot more, and will be strong enough to withstand occasional foot traffic such as aerial men, solar panels etc.

Spanish - hit and miss, 30 years if your very lucky, it's generally weak and will break easier under foot traffic. Chinese and Brazilian - forget it.

Regards
 
imho if you have to use chinese.. then colour fade will likely be an issue, brazillian more stable but you'd be wise to hook fix both.

ref foot traffic, shouldnt be walking on them anyway
 
Bethesdaslate it seems almost impossible to get 24x12 welsh slate round here have you any ideas.
 
New Wesh 24x12's will cost a premium as they're not a regular production size, but you can get them on 4 week lead time. Penrhyn 16x12s are readily available and the most economical size, they'll cost about £42/m2 +vat (as opposed to around £22/m2 +vat for reasonable Spanish)

Re foot traffic - not too many aerial men or solar panel installers out there that manage to do there stuff without going on the roof.
 
That is what I have been told before, but the thing is the roofs in Lancashire are mainly 24x12 22x12 or 22x11 so all the other sizes that people say they can get in welsh slate are not much good to me. What I don't understand is that a century ago they must have knocked 24x12 out in the train load and now they do not do them as a standard slate.
 
It's all down to the economics of producing the slate from the rock that's available, for instance you'd get 3 times as many 16x12s out of the same lump of rock than you would get 24x12s - this makes the 24s disproportionately expensive to produce.

We're pulling off 20's and 22's here all the time too on local authority work, but putting 16's back on is never an issue. The local authorities understand they have to use whatever's available - this has always been the case since year dot.
 
Well I only do private work and there are a lot of terraced houses round here so going down to 16s or anything else is not an option, are you telling me that they only cut one size of rock out of the quarry regardless of what size slate they are intending cutting.
 
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