The process of flat roof repair should always begin with answering three questions:
- What type of flat-roof is on your building?
- What specific problem are you looking to address?
- What other factors (price, downtime, etc) need to be taken into account?
Firstly, determine what material is currently being used on your roof. On a commercial flat roof, you’ll usually have built-up, modified bitumen, EPDM, TPO, PVC, or Sprayed in Place Polyurethane Foam. Each of these materials comes with it’s own laundry list of potential problems, from alligatoring on dried out built up roofs, to seam ruptures on an improperly installed single-ply or modified bitumen roof.
Leaks can be caused by the natural breakdown of the roof over time, improper installation, damage caused by an outside force such as high wind or hail or even vandalism. Whatever the cause these issues will not go away and will cause additional damage to the roof insulation, roof deck, and to the interior of the building. Most commercial building owners pay their roof little mind until leaks begin to affect other parts of the structure, and this can be extremely costly, if it’s not dealt with quickly.
When looking into flat roof repair, there are also a number of potential problem areas of which building owners should be aware. The last thing that anyone wants is to drop thousands of dollars on a roof that leaks or goes out of warranty within a year of installation. If you plan on using any sort of coating, you need to know if your roof has ponding water, because most coatings will break down or peal up in these areas. The obvious way to check this is whether or not there are actual shallow pools retained on your roof’s surface. The other is to check for low-lying areas and stains where was has collected and dried up, indicating places where ponding water has been present. Once these have been located, you’ve eliminated a number of options already.
Now, the third question pertaining to flat roof repair is what do you actually want to get out of your flat roof repair? Obviously, if you have a leak, you want something that is going to stop those leaks immediately and prevent further water penetration. Other considerations are: Would you prefer to coat directly over the existing roof, saving on the cost of haul-off and disposal of roof replacement waste? Do you have pooling water surrounding your HVAC System? Can you afford facility downtime?
Most people don’t want to invest in a product that is going to fail, and tearing off and replacing the area will halt operations for days. But doing nothing will cause untold damage to your building.
NovaTuff is a fluid-applied epoxy system that creates a waterproof membrane over the existing roof. Unlike most coatings, our epoxy will not dissipate in ponding water, and, though we only recommend it for emergency situations, our formula will cure underwater unlike acrylics. In other words, NovaTuff can even be applied in the rain in the event of a leak. Installation is non-invasive, and the most intrusive part of the entire process is powerwashing the problem area of the roof to create a clean surface for application. That means no facility downtime.
Not to mention that our system bonds better to many flat roof materials than they do to themselves. Plus, you can do your part in protecting the environment and save some money, because there is usually no tear-off or disposal involved. Traditional problem areas, such as flashing and seams can simply be coated over with a base-coat and fabric, followed by a top coat. These can then be coated over with our roofing system, which will readily bond with itself and remain, as always, a seamless and waterproof membrane.
