Two tradesmen. One torch. Forty years.
The story on the badge
Top Torch wasn't invented in a branding workshop. It was earned one roof at a time, in three countries, before it ever had a name.
From Leicester and Malta to Sydney rooftops
Zach Smith learned roofing in Leicester, England, where it rains two hundred days a year and a membrane that isn't perfect gets found out by Christmas. Twenty years in the waterproofing industry.
Chris Xuereb learned torch-on membranes in Malta, on Mediterranean rooftops where the sun does to bitumen what English rain does to everything else. Twenty-one years on the torch, fifteen more across tiling and remedial work.
Between them: more than forty years of European trade lineage, from the two climates that stress-test waterproofing hardest. In 2023 they brought it to Sydney, a city that manages to serve both kinds of punishment, sideways winter rain and rooftop summers past sixty degrees, and founded Top Torch Waterproofing.
Why owner-operated is the whole point
The waterproofing industry has a structural problem: the person who wins the job is rarely the person who does it. Quotes come from estimators, work goes to subcontractors, and accountability evaporates somewhere between the two. When the membrane fails in year four, the phone number on the invoice rings out.
Top Torch is built the other way. The blokes who quote your job are the blokes on the torch, and the blokes on the torch own the company. No subbies. No labour hire. No juniors learning on your roof. That's not a marketing line, it's the operating model: fewer jobs, done personally, done once.
Why there's a torch on the badge
Every other waterproofer in the category wears blue and draws water drops. We're named after the tool the trade actually holds: a propane torch, an open flame and a roll of bitumen membrane. The stamps on the badge, owner operated, heat tested, est. 2023, aren't slogans. They're the three facts we'd want to know before letting anyone onto our own roof.
The record so far
Zero membrane failures, and insured as if we expect one. Warranties of 20+ years, registered with the manufacturer, in writing. Six membrane suppliers we trust with our name: SOPREMA, Sika, Ardex, Enduroflex, Fatra and Bayset. And a growing wall of rooftops across Sydney and NSW that we drive past and feel proud of. Some of them are on the work page.
Two tradesmen. One torch. Forty years.
Meet the owners
Zach Smith
Twenty years on roofs, trained in a country where it rains two hundred days a year. If a membrane can survive the English Midlands, Zach knows how it was installed. He's on the torch at every job that carries the badge.
Call Zach 0435 254 303Chris Xuereb
Twenty-one years of torch-on membranes and fifteen of tiling and remedial work, learned on Mediterranean rooftops where the sun is the enemy and shortcuts don't survive a summer. Chris details the drains you'll never think about again.
Call Chris 0427 207 670Membranes the manufacturers stand behind
The work
Roofs we drive past and feel proud of
Every photo on this site is a Top Torch job, taken by the blokes who did it. No stock, no renders.
Can't afford for it to leak twice?
Call the blokes whose names are on the patch. Straight answers, a fixed quote and a warranty that means something.
