Bitumen roof shingles are now a popular choice for covering shed, summerhouse and log cabin roofs.
They are popular with both professional and those doing DIY.
But what are they? How are they made? The first stage in the process of making roofing shingles is to take a huge roll of fibre glass.
They will form the core of the felt shingle tiles when they are finished.
The roll is fixed onto the runners which pull it out and feeds it into the start of the production line.
The fibre glass material is held taught and is then feed through thousands of litres of liquid bitumen.
There are a number of different operations that take place at this stage to make sure that the core material is coated on all the sides and that the coating is thick enough.
Next the roofing shingles are covered in a mixture of small coloured stones to form the top surface.
Most of the colours have a black shadow band across the top to help the roof shingles look more natural once they have been fitted.
The roll is then sent through a series of runners so the bitumen can cool down and start to set.
If the roof shingle is one of the products with a self adhesive layer of bitumen applied to the back of the tile, this will be applied next.
The next stage is to cut the felt strip into the correct tile shapes.
This might be square, hexagonal or something different like the scalloped beaver tail design.
By now the product should be cool enough to start the packing process.
A plastic strip will be applied to the back of any shingles with the self adhesive layer of bitumen on the back.
This stops them sticking together in the packs.
A spray of anti bacterial liquid is misted over the shingles to stop moss and mould developing whilst they are in the packs.
A pile of shingle strips will be piled up by machine and then wrapped in the relevant packaging.
The correct number of packs are then placed onto a pallet which is then vacuum sealed in plastic.
The pallets will then go off to the warehouse to wait until they are ordered.
A certain number of roof shingles from each batch will be sent to the laboratory for vigorous testing to ensure they meet the high standards set by the manufacturers.
Waste products and offcuts are recycled and put back into the production cycle as far as they can be.