What happens when you combine felt and liquid waterproofing?

While more modern materials and systems are constantly entering the market, built-up felt roofing continues to maintain its appeal. The multiple layers of felt provide enhanced protection against weather extremes, including heavy rain, snow and UV exposure and the bitumen bonding creates a watertight seal, preventing leaks and ensuring long-term performance.
BUR is also adaptable to various building types, from commercial properties to residential homes. It’s particularly suited to flat roofs, where proper waterproofing is essential to avoid pooling water. Felt roofs are also relatively straightforward to repair, making them a practical choice for buildings requiring minimal downtime during maintenance. Small damages can often be patched without replacing the entire roof.
In refurbishment projects, BUR particularly provides an excellent opportunity to improve thermal performance by upgrading the insulation beneath the waterproof layers. This can lead to reduced energy costs and enhanced comfort for building occupants. Built-up felt roofing is also one of the more economical options in the roofing industry, offering excellent value for money without compromising performance. Its installation process, while requiring skilled labour, is efficient and well-understood.
While BUR shines on straightforward projects, it also excels in more challenging scenarios. Complex roofs with numerous penetrations, edges, or other detailing can benefit from the inherent flexibility of felt roofing.
Roof details such as vents, pipes, or skylights are often the weakest points in a roofing system, where leaks are most likely to occur and BUR’s flexibility allows it to conform to irregular shapes and transitions, reducing the risk of water ingress.
However, for highly detailed roofs, Proteus Waterproofing takes BUR to the next level by pairing it with liquid waterproofing for the intricate areas. This hybrid approach combines the robustness of felt with the adaptability of liquid-applied systems, delivering seamless protection across the entire roof.

Liquid waterproofing - the game-changer 

Liquid waterproofing complements felt roofing by providing a seamless, joint-free finish that can easily navigate tricky details and when applied, creates a fully bonded, monolithic layer that reinforces vulnerable areas, ensuring long-term durability where felt might struggle to conform perfectly. The liquid waterproofing can be applied directly to irregular shapes, tight corners and other intricate areas, eliminating the risk of water penetration through gaps or overlaps.
Using such a dynamic of combination of waterproofing also provides the opportunity, particularly for refurbishment projects, to consider upgrading insulation, particularly as energy efficiency regulations become stricter. Proteus Waterproofing encourages building owners to take advantage of this opportunity, offering systems compatible with insulation upgrades.
Enhanced insulation reduces heating and cooling costs, lowering energy bills over the building’s lifetime. Better insulation also maintains more consistent indoor temperatures, improving occupant comfort – and most importantly - upgrading insulation helps buildings meet current and future energy efficiency standards.
Proteus offers systems designed to integrate seamlessly with insulation upgrades, ensuring the finished roof meets both waterproofing and thermal performance goals. All this means that the company stands out as a trusted partner for built-up felt roofing and hybrid waterproofing solutions by offering a wide range of high-quality systems designed to meet any roofing challenge.
The company’s team of experts excels in delivering solutions, particularly for roofs with significant detailing, offering a full design and technical support service and much more. It all adds up to the fact that built-up felt roofing remains a cornerstone of the roofing industry, offering unmatched durability, versatility and cost-effectiveness. For complex projects, its strengths can be further amplified by combining it with liquid waterproofing, creating a hybrid system that addresses every challenge, from large flat areas to intricate details.
Proteus Waterproofing’s expertise in both felt and liquid systems ensures that building owners receive a solution tailored to their specific needs, whether they are refurbishing a roof and upgrading insulation or tackling a complex new build – a choice of systems which ,means that even the most challenging roof can be fully waterproofed.