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The Challenge
The rural Australian bushland setting of Moorland in New South Wales’ Mid-Coast region, with its cattle grazing and rolling hills, makes a particularly attractive place to live.
The location’s idyllic rural character, however, presented challenges and opportunities for Fraser Lyne of Fraser Lyne Constructions when building a sprawling family home, particularly in terms of access, transportation, and site logistics.
Situated on top of a hill with expansive views across a 200-acre property, Fraser and the construction team faced particular challenges with the transportation and handling of exceptionally long 22.4 metre Bondor SolarSpan® insulated roofing panels.
SolarSpan® panels were perfectly suited for this build, offering high R Value energy-efficiency and the long spans needed for the roof of the large country homestead. The all-in-one roofing, insulation and ceiling panels, featuring COLORBOND steel finishes, also eliminated the need for additional structural supports and extra layers required in traditional roofing.
However, the rural site’s topography and narrow access presented immediate logistical hurdles, with the team uncertain whether the extendable truck could navigate the site’s gate and challenging terrain.
Manufacturing the long spanning panels also represented a technical milestone for Bondor’s manufacturing facility in Sydney. At 22.4 metres – the longest panels ever produced on-site – the Bondor team had to follow specialised handling techniques to ensure structural integrity.
The critical concern was maintaining the panels’ composite structure during lifting, transportation, and unloading, with potential damage presenting a substantial risk to the project’s success.
The Solution
To mitigate these on-site and manufacturing challenges, the construction and factory teams needed to come up with some innovative solutions.
A key challenge discussed was accessing the property with the extendable truck carrying the 22.4-metre-long panels.
“We’ve got to get them from down there up to here, and I just don’t know if he’s going to make it through that gate down there,” Fraser said.
As a backup plan, Fraser organised a PackBoy from Cladboy Australia, a modular lifting system designed for safely handling full packs of insulated panels, to manually transport panels if the truck couldn’t access the site.
“They’re specifically designed for this sort of transportation and this product. So, we’re going to chuck it on the front of a franna (crane) and just walk them up the driveway and park them up here, ready for installation next week,” he said.
Fraser’s ‘plan B’ paid off with the panels successfully delivered on site intact.
Manufacturing the 22.4 metre SolarSpan® panels also proved a challenge for the Bondor team. This was the longest panel length ever manufactured at the Sydney factory, requiring meticulous precision and careful planning to successfully produce the exceptionally long spanning panels.
While the machine could easily produce panels up to 25 to 27m long, the biggest test was in safely handling such extensive panels without compromising their structural integrity.
The primary concerns were lifting the panels off the production line without causing damage, ensuring the composite structure remained intact, and managing transportation and unloading at the construction site to avoid stressing or breaking the panels.
“We’ve trained the team over a number of projects now to be able to do this effectively and efficiently,” said Bary Mitchell, State Manager Bondor NSW.
Producing the 22.4 metre SolarSpan® panels was notable not just for its manufacturing challenge, but also for its practical benefits in construction. SolarSpan® offers longer spans with fewer joins, high R Value energy-efficiency and reduced need for structural framing.
Manufactured in Australia by Bondor, SolarSpan® is Australia’s leading insulated roofing panel offering long-spans, low pitch and high thermal efficiency.
