The process of flat roof repair should always begin with answering three questions:

1. What type of flat-roof is on your building?
2. What specific problem are you looking to address?
3. 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.

The post Commercial Flat Roof Repair appeared first on NovaTuff Coatings.

In January 2013, Virginia-based Lauren Manufacturing’s building caught fire during a standard patch to the building’s roof.

The fire occurred on Tuesday, January 29, when a crew attempted to patch a large leak over the factory’s large rubber extruder, and a spark from the machinery used to heat the asphalt dropped through the hole and caught fire to the insulation, spreading horizontally across the metal deck.  Eye witnesses stated that black billows of smoke were seen coming from the roof of the building.

Firefighters were able to squelch the blaze, but only after removing a portion of the building’s metal deck.

Initially, Lauren had cancelled the first shift to allow crews to patch the leak, but they were forced cancel the second as well while the fire still blazed.

Now, the above story is one of the worst possible scenarios to image for how a standard patch could go horribly wrong.  But these kinds of stories do happen, and they result in a loss of time and money for both the contractor and the building owner, regardless of the severity.

Outdated techniques like asphalt roofing are an accident waiting to happen.  It’s surprising that more fires haven’t been started from heating tar on top of a building to boiling and spreading it on over the roof.  Simple human errors (or even freak accidents) can lead to damages that have to be paid for and can bring a work schedule to a grinding, indefinite halt.

Tearing off the roof and just starting with a substance less accident prone is one solution, but that’s extremely expensive and requires days to weeks of facility downtime, depending on the size of the roof.

So, in lieu of wasting time and money, building owners and contractors can take advantage of our fluid-applied roof system to alleviate the risk and liability associated with older roofing methods, without the building owner incurring the massive expense of tear-off and disposal.  Since NovaTuff requires no heating or special equipment to install, there’s no risk of fire, lowering an installer’s liability.

The post Reducing Liability And Risk for Building Owners and Contractors appeared first on NovaTuff Coatings.