We advise and consult on countless roof insulation projects, so we recently decided it was time to put our money where our mouth is and apply that advice to our own building. We love bringing historic stone and timber buildings back to life here at ECS, and tackling this old stone structure—complete with a few interesting architectural quirks—taught us some valuable lessons while proving first-hand that our methods work.
When you are restoring these old structures, the roof is not just a lid to keep the rain out. It is the critical cap of a living, breathing home. I want to be clear right off the bat: we are not a roofing company. Our real passion and expertise is engineering the structural framework and the breathable eco-insulation envelopes beneath the tiles. For the final exterior finish, we are incredibly lucky to work alongside some fantastic master roofers. It is this teamwork between our high-performance core and their top-tier finishing that creates the ultimate roof for restorations here in Western Asturias and beyond.
For decades, the construction industry has treated old stone buildings like modern concrete boxes, sealing them tight with synthetic foams and plastic membranes. That approach almost always leads to trapped moisture, dampness, and rotting roof timbers. Our philosophy is definitely different, and applying it to our own property reinforced exactly why. We build a vapour-permeable eco-envelope that manages moisture naturally, giving you modern thermal and acoustic comfort without suffocating the building.
While our roofing partners handle the outside, the materials they use completely change how we engineer what goes underneath. You have to balance local aesthetics, longevity, and structural reality. Natural Spanish slate, or pizarra, is the gold standard up here. Split straight from the rock, it easily lasts over a century and a quarter. It absorbs practically zero water, so frost cannot shatter it, and the carbon footprint is incredibly low. The catch is the weight. Slate can easily hit fifty kilos per square metre, which is where we step in to build a heavy-duty timber framing system to hold it up safely. Down in southern Spain, fired clay or concrete tiles are the go-to choice. They look beautiful down there, but in the freezing, wet winters of the Asturian mountains, clay is a liability. It absorbs rainwater, freezes, expands, and cracks. Plus, clay tiles need massive amounts of energy to fire in kilns and simply do not have the lifespan of a good slate roof.
Living with Atlantic squalls and the ever-present risk of summer wildfires means your roof has to be a fortress. Because of its sheer weight and the traditional way our partners double-nail or hook every single stone, a slate roof stands up to gale-force winds far better than overlapping clay tiles. Both hold Class A fire ratings, so flying embers will not set them alight. But beneath that slate is where our Steico wood fibre system steps up as the ultimate secondary defence. We use Steico Integral sarking boards featuring a precision tongue-and-groove profile. Once locked together over the rafters, they create a windproof, highly water-resistant deck. Even if a massive storm blows rain up under the slate, the Steico layer safely sheds it straight down into the gutters.
Fire safety is just as crucial. If you expose synthetic plastics like EPS to fire, they melt rapidly and rain toxic, flaming liquid plastic down into the house. Dense Steico wood fibre acts more like a thick oak log. It chars on the surface, creating a carbon layer that drastically slows down the spread of heat and flames without giving off lethal petrochemical smoke.
One of the best parts of any restoration is keeping the original roof timbers exposed inside, creating a stunning, high open cathedral ceiling. Because we put all our insulation on top of the rafters, you get to see the history of the building right from your living room. To make those old chestnut beams look absolutely spectacular, we now use a state-of-the-art pulsed laser cleaning system. It lets us gently strip away decades of soot, old limewash, and paint without damaging the natural grain of the wood beneath.
Getting to that point takes a lot of serious graft, and this is where we learned a few hard lessons on our own stone building. Its interesting historical features and irregular geometry meant the roofline was complex. After holding up heavy stone for a hundred years, old roofs are never perfectly straight. To give our insulation boards and the slate a flat base, we try to level the framework as best we can in most cases. We pack the tops of sagging rafters to get the exterior flat while keeping that beautiful rustic sag visible from the inside. If we find rot or woodworm damage, we never just rip out a historic beam. We carefully cut away the bad sections and splice in fresh timber to keep the authentic character intact.
The insulation layer is the most common failure point in modern restorations, which is exactly why we refuse to use synthetic EPS or XPS plastics. We exclusively use natural, vapour-permeable Steico wood fibre. Wood fibre naturally breathes, absorbing and releasing moisture safely to regulate indoor humidity and stop the condensation that rots old wood. It also provides incredible thermal mass. Cheap plastic foam heats up in hours, turning your upstairs rooms into an oven on a hot summer afternoon. Dense wood fibre has a decrement delay of ten to fourteen hours, absorbing the heat all day and only releasing it slowly as the night air cools down. On top of that, its sheer density absorbs the loud drumming of heavy Atlantic rain, keeping the house incredibly quiet.
Now that the roof on our own project is finished, we can honestly say the entire process went very well. The difference inside is night and day. The house feels vastly more comfortable, and with 200mm of Steico insulation, it is obviously far more energy-efficient. By bringing together breathable wood fibre structures and the amazing craftsmanship of our roofing partners, we get to build roofs that honour these historic buildings while protecting them for the next hundred years—and we now have the ultimate proof of concept right over our own heads.