PREFA Protects monument

Today's 5-star hotel has had a turbulent history in which it experienced many interventions in its substance. “Built originally as a holiday residence for the architect Adolf Greiner in the 19th century, it was extended in 1898 and then converted after the 2nd World War. The year 1983 saw this traditional building standing just a stone’s throw from Heroes’ Square topped with an unbefitting flat roof that robbed it of much of its originality and authenticity. The roof of the original draft was especially characteristic of the historical surroundings,” explained the architect Dr. Lajos Fekete from Citinvest Kft. “By restoring the original pitched roof construction of 1898 and the cupola we have given the most popular square in Budapest back part of its architectural flair from the era of the Danube Monarchy. Without PREFA this would have been almost impossible from a technical point of view and totally impossible from a cost point of view".

“The use of aluminium tiling on historical buildings and for monument preservation projects with all their special peculiarities and problems is nothing new for us at PREFA”, the experts of the Hungarian PREFA team informed us.  “We were involved as specialists in the planning from the very outset". 
The original roof had to be reconstructed from old photos and pictures and existing parts of plans, no easy undertaking: steep roof pitches and a dominant cupola required high-quality, resilient but at the same time lightweight materials; the monument conservation authorities demanded an aesthetic construction that would require no maintenance and on top of all that a key demand of client Grabarics Kft.was a realistic cost/performance ratio.

“We decided to use PREFA roof rhomboid panels and PREFALZ in P.10 light grey for the roof areas with a low pitch, because these fulfilled all the high demands”, said the architect Fekete as he took stock of the prestigious renovation of the 600 m² roof area and went on to praise metal roof coverings for the renovation of old buildings: “An entire m2 of roof can be tiled with just 12 rhomboid panels (290 × 290 mm per panel in the laid area) and the extremely light weight of 2.6 kg per m² make PREFA roof rhomboid panels the ideal solution here. Because reinforcing old substructures or replacing them with new ones ready for traditional roof tiling often works out to be far too heavy for old buildings. PREFA roof rhomboid panels are an extremely resilient solution despite the fact that the lightweight, 0.7 mm thick panels, which are laid on full boarding with a separating layer with roof pitches of 22° or 40%, weigh only 800kg/m².

PREFA also scored points with the Hungarian monument preservation office with its innovative P.10. surface finish. The special composition of the coating makes it particularly resistant and the matt finish lends it an elegant appearance. 
In combination with the high-quality alloy of the pliable PREFALZ aluminium bands that are easy to shape but still do not break on the bent areas, the malleable P.10 colour coating with its long-term resistance to fluctuating temperatures and weathering is impervious to the ravages of time.