Commercial roof maintenance

Elmer's Roofing Service
Hortonville, WI
920-779-9690
Website

Elmer Dowling

Often times your roof gets neglected, as it is unseen. Unless you physically go up onto the roof, you won’t know if there is damage, cracks, splits or blocked drainage unless it begins leaking inside the building. If you wait until this happens, it’s often too late and you are left rushing to choose the fastest roofing option to solve the leaking water as quickly as possible. We want to encourage you to be proactive so you can save yourself the extra cost, time, and stress. Summer is a perfect time to find a roof coating system that fits your roofs particular needs. 

Elastomeric roof coating systems offer multiple advantages over traditional roofing options as they require less time for installation and application, reduced costs, lengthened roof life, and these roof coating systems are sustainable - allowing you to recoat your roof every 10-15 years to avoid a roof tear-off forever. Dry, warm weather is the most ideal weather condition for application of a roof coating system, making the summer an excellent time to restore your roof.

 Traditional roofing requires a roof tear-off after two roofs have been installed on a building. This is a building code law that is enforced and must be abided by; however, installing a roof coating system allows you to avoid a roof tear-off (indefinitely, might I add) as these systems do not bare the weight of a traditional roof, allowing roof coating systems to be exempt from this code. When you restore your roof with one of our roofing systems you save yourself time - no business closures, no tear-off stages, and an easy application process. You also save yourself money - there are no landfill fees and shorter construction time because the roof coating system is spray applied directly over your existing roof membrane. Business is conducted as usual so you don't lose production or sales efforts. Another advantage to roof coating systems is they are seamless. When applied, these systems are sprayed onto your rooftop allowing the coating to spread and bond together; filling gaps, seams, joints and cracks, covering necessary areas around pipes, drains and equipment creating a durable, monolithic, custom installed, watertight roofing system particularly created for your individual roof. Conklin has
been producing quality roof coatings for 40 years with a time tested track record of success!

Call us today to get your roof inspected! 

Elmer's Roofing Service

Why spend money every year to maintain your roof?

Everyday exposure to sun, rain, air conditioning repair workers, and other wear-and-tear slowly ages your roof membrane until its service life ends. Every extra year you can eke out of the roof is that much more money that can be saved for other expenditures. A roof doesn't need food and exercise, but it does need regular check-up's in the form of regular inspections and prompt repairs.

What benefit is there in spending money every year to maintain the roof? Studies have shown that a roofs not regularly maintained will only last about half of their expected service life. You might say "That's why I have a warranty.", but don't assume that a warranty will help. Almost all manufacturers of roofing materials state specifically in their warranty that your warranty is void if the roof is not maintained. If you can not show that the roof has been properly and andequately maintained, you will not have a case when you try to make a claim on a warranty issue.

Your roof should be inspected at least twice a year to keep the roof alive as long as possible and to maintain your warranty. Depending on the depth and complexity of the inspection, the inspector can be the building staff, an architect or engineer who specializes in roof consulting, or a competent roofing contractor. The inspection can entail anything from looking at the roof while walking to repair an A/C unit, all the way to a formal inspection with a moisture survey.

Find a Contractor here

ROOFING CONTRACTORS NEEDED IN MULTIPLE STATES!

Patton Services | (309) 303-3128 | rpatton55@comcast.net | http://www.whiteroofingsystems.com

Roof asset management - preventive maintenance

All roof systems have a limited lifespan and will eventually require replacement, retrofit, repair, or restoration.

Developing a preventive maintenance plan with your roofing contractor can further extend the life of a roof and save you money by correcting problems before they become major leaks that could cause real structural damage.

Over time, a Roof Asset Management Program can optimize roof performance, save you money, and allow for roof replacement or repairs to be performed on a planned basis - not in reaction to a crisis.

If your roof is new and has been inspected by a roof consultant throughout construction, the final inspection report should provide enough information to establish a maintenance plan and inspection timetable.

For existing roofs, a roof consultant or qualified roofing contractor should thoroughly inspect the roof and provide a written report of findings with a photo survey of roof conditions for your future reference. Based on those findings, work with the roof consultant or roofing contractor to develop projected life-cycle budget cost estimates and establish plans for upcoming maintenance, replacement, or repair.

A good roof-management program should include annual inspections to look for damages - including membrane deterioration, water blisters, ponding water areas, coping impact damage, rusting metal, spray foam oxidation, membrane splits, etc.

If your roof shows signs of deterioration, moisture testing may be recommended:

• Moisture probes are used to check distressed areas for the presence of moisture by probing through the roof surface and taking readings from the moisture meter.
• Infrared scans are infrared snapshots of a roof area taken to detect the possible presence of moisture by recording temperature differentials.
• Nuclear scans utilize a roof grid survey to detect subsurface moisture.
• Roof core samples are an investigative hole is cut through the roof and insulation to document conditions in suspect areas (the hole is patched upon completion).

The goal of both new construction and re-roofing review and ongoing roof-management programs is to protect the interest you (the building owner or manager), to extend the life of your roof, and to prevent costly leaks and damage.


Find a Contractor here


ROOFING CONTRACTORS NEEDED IN MULTIPLE STATES!
Patton Services | (309) 303-3128 | rpatton55@comcast.net | http://www.whiteroofingsystems.com

Preventing Premature Roof Failures

The way a roof wears can show a lot about why it is failing. Each type of failure, whether it be blisters, splits or punctures (just to name a few) typically results from a specific cause. For example, poor design can lead to splits and debris can cause punctures. Understanding the causes of the most common types of roof problems can help building owners and facility managers prevent the errors that too often shorten the life of the roof.

Preventing problems begins with the design of the roof and choice of materials. The roof membrane chosen should reflect the characteristics of the building. If there will be a lot of foot traffic, you should choose a system that will be resistant to such damage. If the roof is wide open and there will be a great deal of thermal movement, a stretchable material such as an EPDM membrane is a better choice than a system that has limited elongation capabilities.

Details must be carefully thought out prior to installation. A transition from a gravel stop to a parapet is a poor building design that must be compensated for in the roof design. A metal transition piece can help alleviate problems that occur as a result of differential movement and different directional movement between the gravel-stop portion and the parapet portion. Correcting slope-to-drain problems should be determined at the design stage.

The roof must also be properly installed, using dry materials and installing them according to the design details or manufacturer’s requirements. Expansion joints have to terminate in a way that the end of the joint will still compensate for building movement. This means that there should be no material crossing the joint — not gravel stops, copings, membrane, and certainly not roofing cement — that cannot flex or move with the movement of the structure. All seams should be properly adhered.

Finally, the roof must also be properly maintained. Roof access should be limited to only those who need to be up there. Keep smokers, lunches and sunbathers off the roof. Not only will the cigarettes burn holes in the membrane, the foot traffic will damage the surface and cause the roof to fail prematurely. Building owners and managers should monitor the activity of sign installers and window washers to be sure that they are not damaging the roof as they work. New HVAC installations should be flashed not by the mechanical contractor, but by a competent roofing contractor to be sure that the penetrations are sealed.

The roof itself should be examined twice a year, including having the drains cleared and all roof debris removed. All small problems like punctures and sealant failures should be addressed at this time to be sure that they are not causing problems that will lead to failure. The life of a roof is finite, but it doesn’t have to be short-lived. Some common sense when designing the roof, attention to detail when installing it, and care when using it will maximize its life.

Find a Contractor here

CONTRACTORS NEEDED IN MULTIPLE STATES!

Patton Services | (309) 303-3128 | rpatton55@comcast.net | http://www.whiteroofingsystems.com

Regular Roofing Maintenance - Cost Calculations

A poorly maintained roof will last only about half of its service life, costing building owners and facility managers hundreds of thousands of dollars. Don't believe that? Let's do the math...

Let's say you have a 50,000 square foot roof with a 10-year system and the cost to install it was $10 per square foot. That means the roof cost $500,000 to install, therefore the cost per year of the roof is $50,000 per year. If the roof is not maintained, and it only lasts half of its design life, the yearly cost of this roof jumps to $100,000 a year. If that happens, in 5 years you will need another $500,000 (or more) to replace it.

The cost to maintain a roof averages about 2% of the roof installation cost per year. In this exapmle, that means $10,000 a year. Over 10 years, that means $100,000. Spending that money to keep the roof maintained means the roof should last its full service life, which in turn means that you will only have to spend that $500,000 once. So even though you have spent $100,000 over the roof's service life, you may well have saved $400,000 by not having to replace the roof prematurely.

We hope you have enjoyed this week's blog series on roof maintenance. If you have any questions, please call Randy Patton (Conklin IBO) of Patton Services at (309) 303-3128 or email rpatton55@comcast.net.

Find a Contractor

Tired of labor problems and low profit margins?
Make more $$ spraying coatings with Conklin Roofing Systems!
Patton Services | (309) 303-3128 | rpatton55@comcast.net | http://www.whiteroofingsystems.com
 

Regular Roofing Maintenance - Do You Need a Roofing Contractor?

The pros of using the building staff to inspect the roof are obvious: they are already in the building, there is no out-of-pocket cost, and the building engineers already should have maintenance programs set up for HVAC and other equipment (adding a roof program is easy to do).

But there are cons as well. For one thing, they may not be sure what they should look for. What's more, they have other responsibilities and may not have the time or inclination to go on the roof. On top of that, expertise may fluctuate with staff changes. Of course, it takes little expertise to watch for obvious things like punctures, holes and tears in the flashings, flashings that are slipping and opening up at the top, rusted metal components, or debris building up on the roof.

Another option is to hire an architect or engineer who specializes in roof consulting. These can be expensive and hard to find, and they need to be contracted and scheduled. But with those drawbacks come several advantages. The first is that they have no vested interest in the outcome of the roof survey: Their fees don't change whether the roof is in poor condition or good condition. A competent roof consultant knows what to look at — not only the obvious items but also the unusual conditions that affect roofs and cause failures. The consultant will also understand why problems are occurring, will know the most appropriate repairs and can write specifications for repairs that will resolve issues found during the inspection. Armed with a specific scope of work, the facility manager can seek bids on an apples-to-apples basis. The third advantage, especially with architects, is that they know the whole building and can identify problems that are not roof-related.

Roofing contractors vary widely in expertise, depending on the level of personnel sent out to do the inspection. Some are excellent and do a professional, knowledgeable job. Others send out their repair mechanics who may know how to make generic repairs but may not know the system that is on your roof. If they are used to asphalt-based roofs and you have a single-ply membrane, they may not have the expertise to do a competent inspection.

Consider also that contractors make their money by doing repairs and replacing roofs. So even the most professional contractors have a built-in bias whether they acknowledge it or not. Some contractors offer periodic inspections as a part of a total maintenance program — inspections and repairs. The program is set for a given number of years for a given cost. Unfortunately, this set up creates a financial disincentive for a contractor to do the marginal work that is needed as costs are increased and profit drops.

If a contractor does the inspections for "free," beware. There is no such thing as a free lunch. It often means that the contractor has to find repairs to pay for the cost of the inspection. If you have one contractor do the inspection and then "bid out" the repairs, in an attempt to keep the process unbiased, there is no guarantee that the work done will match the required maintenance. Why? If you need to refill seven pitch pans, you need to specify which seven. Bidding off a report may not be enough to assure the repairs needed are the repairs actually made. The contractor doing the inspection also knows that it has an advantage in this bid situation as it is the one writing the scope of work.

The Most Important Step

The most important part of the check-up is to follow through with repairs to the problems noted. If you have a roof consultant do the inspection, he or she can provide a specification with a defined scope of work to bid the repairs to qualified contractors. If you have contracted for a maintenance program with a roofer, be sure to give the contractor your list of problems so that everything is repaired.

Finally, check your budget for the upcoming year. Have you allowed money for maintenance? A figure of 2% of the replacement cost of the roof is a good rule of thumb. You will need to adjust that figure up or down depending on the age of the roof and its condition. One option is to have the consultant provide you with a budget figure and an estimate of probable remaining service life so that the money is available if the roof needs replacement.

If you provide regular check-ups and follow through with repairs to the small problems that are found from year to year, you can be more comfortable knowing that you are saving a lot of money in the long term. Just saving the aggravation of having to go through a reroofing is well worth the price.

Find a Contractor

Tired of labor problems and low profit margins?
Make more $$ spraying coatings with Conklin Roofing Systems!
Patton Services | (309) 303-3128 | rpatton55@comcast.net | http://www.whiteroofingsystems.com
 

Regular Roofing Maintenance - How to Inspect a Roof

Any roof inspection should look at the roof, but the roof surface is only one item that should be checked.

The first thing to look at is your files. Do you have all of the paperwork you need? How about a copy of the warranty? Do you have the names and phone numbers of the companies that have been involved with the roof — previous inspectors, roofing contractors, architects, manufacturer technical services? You should have a copy of all the repair orders and the results of the repairs made. Finally, there should be a roof plan, drawn to scale, that not only shows all the equipment on the roof, but also the locations of any leaks and any repairs made.

The walls and glazing should also be checked. Too many times leaks from wall, sealant and window failures are disguised as "roof" leaks. Look for cracks and water stains that may be symptomatic of problems in these areas. The worst offenders are pipes, conduit and other penetrations through the walls. Too often these are left unsealed, especially when they are installed as retrofits.

Once those steps have been taken, you are ready to look at the roof. The best place to start is with an overall look at the roof. Is it covered in debris, like leaves, plants and old air conditioning equipment? This is a sure sign that the roof has been neglected. Look at the surface of the roof. If there is a coating, is it intact? If there is gravel or ballast, are the rocks evenly distributed and covering the whole surface?

The surface of the roof provides protection from ultraviolet radiation from the sun, which causes most roofing materials to age and break down. It's like your skin. If you don't give yourself UV protection, your skin ages prematurely and sometimes with serious results.

You should also check the drainage system. If there are large areas of standing water that never seem to go away, it may be possible to solve the problem simply by removing the gunk from around the drain. Or you may need to snake the roof drain pipes or down spouts. Standing water can lead to premature failure of the roof as the water may leach the chemicals that keep roofs pliable out of the membrane. Worse still, if there is a puncture in an area of standing water, what should have been a minor drip becomes a major disaster as all of that standing water ends up inside the building.

Roof failures rarely start in the large expanses of field membrane. Any roof check should pay special attention to the membrane and metal at changes in plane and at penetrations through the roof. First, make sure the surfacing is intact. Look for punctures, tears and scrapes in the membrane. Check for unsealed laps both in the vertical part of the flashings and also where the flashing terminates on the field of the roof. Make sure the membrane is not drooping. This is a symptom that the flashing was improperly installed — either it wasn't fastened properly at the top, or it was not properly adhered to the wall or curb. If you see diagonal wrinkles in the flashings, you have a situation where the roof deck and the wall are moving independently. These wrinkles will end up as cracks in the flashings and ultimately as leaks.

If you have expansion joints running across your roof, include them in the inspection. Some roofing contractors don't terminate expansion joints correctly and, as a result, the expansion joints crack at the ends. Check the rubber bellows for cuts and open laps and also for "repairs" done with roofing cement or other inappropriate materials.

If penetrations such as pipes and equipment stands are waterproofed with metal or plastic pitch pans or concrete rings, check the sealer to be sure that it is not cracked and that the pan or ring is completely filled with the sealer. Check the bottom of the concrete ring to be sure the seal between the ring and the roof membrane is still sealed. Check alternate flashings such as prefabricated metals or plastic or rubber boots for cracks, holes and failed sealants.

Find a Contractor

Tired of labor problems and low profit margins?
Make more $$ spraying coatings with Conklin Roofing Systems!
Patton Services | (309) 303-3128 | rpatton55@comcast.net | http://www.whiteroofingsystems.com
 

Regular Roofing Maintenance - When to Inspect the Roof

Everyday exposure to sun, rain, air conditioning repair workers, and other wear and tear slowly ages the roof membrane until the service life ends. Every extra year you can eke out of the roof is that much more money that can be saved for other purposes. A roof doesn't need good food or proper exercise. But a roof does need regular check-ups in the form of regular inspections and prompt repairs.

What benefit is there in spending money every year to maintain the roof? Studies have shown that a roof that is not regularly maintained will only last about half of its expected service life. You might say "That's why I have a warranty.", but don't assume that a warranty will help. Almost all manufacturers of roofing materials state specifically in their warranty that the warranty is void if the roof is not maintained. If you can't show that the roof has been maintained, you will not have a case when you try to make a claim on a supposed warranty issue.

Experienced facility managers know that a roof should be inspected at least twice a year to keep the roof alive as long as possible and to maintain the warranty. But many don't know what to look for, so they either hire someone else to do it or it just doesn't get done. Depending on the depth and complexity of the inspection, the inspector can be the building staff, an architect or engineer who specializes in roof consulting, or a competent roofing contractor. The inspection can entail anything from looking at the roof while walking to repair an A/C unit all the way to a formal inspection with a moisture survey.

  

When to Inspect the Roof?

You want to have the inspections done once before the season with the most severe weather and once after. In the northern climates, the severe weather is winter where the cold, storms and precipitation contributes more to the demise of the roof. However, where hot weather rules, summer is the severe season - the solar UV radiation is higher, and the roof is subjected to high heat and to thermal shock due to sudden cooling during summer rains. You want to check the roof before the severe season to prepare the roof for its ordeal to come and once after it has weathered the season to repair any problems that happened during.

Periodically, a formal moisture survey should be done in addition to the normal visual survey. There are three major types of moisture survey systems used, none of which actually measures water. All of them measure properties of the roof materials that change when there is water present.

1. An infrared scan measures the amount of heat retained or lost through the insulation. Wet insulation transmits heat better than dry materials. Thus, the infrared camera will pick up the higher levels of heat radiated by wet materials.
2. Nuclear isotopic meters work by sending hydrogen ions into the roof system and counting the number that bounce back. Because water has two hydrogen ions in every molecule, the number of ions counted increases significantly when water is present in the roof.
3. Electrical capacitance and resistance meters measure the ability of roof materials to conduct electricity. They work on the principle that wet materials conduct electricity better than dry ones do.

Each of these testing methods has limitations that need to be discussed with a roofing expert to determine their applicability to a particular roof before they are used. It is worthwhile to have a formal moisture survey done at least once every five years. If a roof is found to be in marginal condition at any time, a survey should be used at that point to help formulate a course of action.

Find a Contractor

Tired of labor problems and low profit margins?
Make more $$ spraying coatings with Conklin Roofing Systems!
Patton Services | (309) 303-3128 | rpatton55@comcast.net | http://www.whiteroofingsystems.com

Deferring Maintenance Brings Risks for Commercial Properties

It’s been more than 20 years since APPA published The Decaying American Campus: A Ticking Time Bomb. That report estimated that $60 billion in deferred maintenance existed on U.S. college campuses (which is more than $100 billion in today's dollars). Since then, APPA says there has been significant  progress but much remains to be done.

The problem of deferred maintenance is most often associated with institutional buildings since schools, hospitals and government bodies typically can’t just walk away from buildings, put them on the market to get what they can and leave someone else with the problem of upgrading those properties.

But government institutions aren’t the only organizations at risk. Take a look at this roofing article, where Karen Warseck describes a warehouse owner who put off a roof recover because the property didn’t have a tenant. Well, it has a tenant now and it also needs a new deck along with a new roof because leaks caused the old steel deck to rust through.

Deferred maintenance is insidious. No one decides to ruin a roof deck or let boilers go without maintenance for so long that they have to be replaced years before they should have needed replacement. But with the number of distressed assets in the commercial property market today and the pressure on facility budgets in all sorts of organizations, it’s easy to believe that a lot of needed infrastructure work is being deferred.

We strongly encourage commercial building owners and facility & property managers to ensure that basic routine roof cleaning and maintenance is done annually by a professional roofing contractor to avoid having to completely replace a roof years before it should have been. You will save a lot more money in the long-run (and basic cleaning and maintenance isn't that expensive - under 5 cents per square foot).

Find A Contractor

Tired of labor problems and low profit margins?
Make more $$ spraying coatings with Conklin Roofing Systems!
Patton Services | (309) 303-3128 | rpatton55@comcast.net | http://www.whiteroofingsystems.com