Building a home on the Island is becoming an increasingly frustrating exercise, according to some residents because of the difficulty and expense of finding traditional building materials, especially Bermuda slate for roofing.

The cost of Bermuda slate has more than doubled in the last two years and with the demise of dedicated quarrying sites, builders are often forced to either quarry their own properties or use alternative roofing materials.

One disgruntled builder told The Royal Gazette when he renovated his home it was a long wait to find stone and he had to “pay through the nose”. He added: “It is a bad story if you want to use traditional business materials.”

Architect David Benevides told the newspaper yesterday that a piece of slate two years ago sold for $1.25 but has jumped to $3 per piece now. The price jump appeared to be a case of supply and demand with dedicated quarries becoming exhausted and quarry workers now having to source other quarry sites - usually proposed building sites.

But Mr. Benevides added that the price has now “stabilised” because of alternative roofing materials on the market. SKB has offered an alternative for some 30 years now, which general manager James Perry said had been popular for many years with commercial sites - including ACE, XL, the Waterfront and parts of the new Berkeley school - but was now seeing a surge in the home market as well. And SAL also offers an alternative - Dura Slate - a manufactured product that claimed to have the look and feel of Bermuda stone slate and used the same lime and mortar mix as Bermuda slate. When asked if his clients were turning to roofing alternatives over holding out for Bermuda slate, Mr. Benevides said some builders had little other choice. But in the case of builders who can quarry their own properties, Mr. Benevides said although a planning permit was required, the department had been signing off on quarry licences “in a matter of weeks”.

Cooper & Gardner architect John Gardner also said he had seen a growing trend towards builders having their sites quarried ahead of building. He cited the development as a good thing with builders turning to use of materials from the land as it had become more difficult to source the supplies elsewhere.

“It is interesting, a return to the old days in some ways as builders are forced, ironically, to get their materials from the land.”

And it was something that Mr. Gardner said he tried to encourage home builders to do, “where circumstances permit” as it was environmentally sound. He added that he saw it as a community responsibility “for developers to quarry properties where they could”.

As for alternative roofing materials Mr. Gardner said it was a case of the “market responding to need”. But Mr. Gardner did express concern about losing the skilled quarry workers if there was too much of a shift away from traditional materials. “That is worrying as we would be losing a part of our heritage. We need to be careful of that,” he said.

And there is still good news for builders set on traditional materials, as there are a handful of quarry workers carrying on. Jonathan Cumberbatch has been at it for 22 years and said he was carrying on a family tradition “from both sides”.

Mr. Cumberbatch said there were still up to a dozen other people working in the field and as for sourcing quarry sites now that dedicated quarries were shut, he said it “was really not a problem, as many people are ready to build. That is where we are getting the sites, mostly when people are ready to build. We are never without work.”