You area building owner or a manager and everything’s going great but there’s only one problem, you have a leaky roof.
This can be brought about by various things such as climate change and U.V. One solution could be replacing the roof all together and that’s fine but what if I told you of a simpler, less expensive restoration process to repair your roof while strengthening it against future damages.Here’s how:
STEP 1: INSPECTION
The inspection process is the most important thing as this is how you’ll get to know the root cause of your problem, which in this case is a leaky roof. Here are a few examples of possible causes and restoration of the same.
POOLING WATER
This is water that has stayed on a roof for more than 48hrs of dry weather and is usually brought about if your commercial building has a flat roof that isn’t levelled. The water can pool in different areas causing a leak.
The solution to this can be gotten by doing the following:
- Fixing the drainage – Start by looking for plugged drains. Often, it’s a simple thing such as a clogged drain that may have caused serious pooling.
Conversely, if the problem still persists, you might want to check the gutters or draining channels. Water will undoubtedly collect on your roof if a gutter or drainage channel is immobile.
- Fixing the low spot on your roof – Different resources including liquid patching materials and a general epoxy concrete filler make it easier to achieve this.
- Fixing the slope on the roof –After checking the above and the problem still remains, then there’s a possibility that the roof might have not been built by the right pitch.
Adding a tapered roof insulation will be the solution to the slopped area as well as increase the building’s energy efficiency.
A ROOFING MEMBRANE THAT’S DAMAGED
A roofing membrane is a type of roofing system which is used in the creation of a watertight roof which will cover to protect the inner side of the building. A damaged membrane will have cracks, shrinkage, blistering, or holes that expose the roof’s insulation. Fixing a damaged membrane will be determined by the type of flat roofing membrane you have. If it’s a rubber roof membrane, the small areas can be fixed by putting a patch to the area that’s affected.
STEP 2: MEASURE
Measuring how bad the roof is leaking helps you establish a baseline of how far you’re doing and it will help in the understanding of the situation, if it is improving, getting worse or staying the same over time. This can be done by putting out a bucket and measure the amount of water after a rainstorm. This helps in knowing the depth of the leak, thus knowing how far you’ll have to fix.
STEP 3: CHECK PLUMBING VENT BOOTS
These can either be made of plastic, two-piece metal units or even a combination of both plastic and metal. The base of both the plastic and metal vent boots should be checked for cracks or broken seams. After this, one should also inspect the elastic boot near the pipe as it may have gotten torn or rotted away hence allowing water to seep its way into the house along the pipe. Such problems can be fixed by replacing the old vent boot, unless the boot s in good shape and I only missing a couple of nails.
STEP 4: CHECK YOUR WALLS AND DORMERS
In some cases, wind-driven rain tend to enter through the above roof, especially around windows or through cracks and knotholes. Also, the dormer walls may have provided spots where water can trickle down entering the roof. This can be brought about by seals that may have experienced cracks, are old or are even missing between corner boards and window edges, which can be fixed by replacing them.
Follow these simple steps and get rid of that annoying roof leak saving yourself a good amount of money as well as strengthening your roof, and having a good image to both your customers and employees or even those you work with on a day to day basis.
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