Predict When Your Flat Roof Will Leak

If you've got a flat roof at home, you probably have heard the statement, it's not if it's going to leak, but when it's going to leak. But the problem isn't the fact that you have a flat roof. The problem is that it's been designed wrong, maintained wrong, and actually even built wrong. Kyle Brooks is going to teach us a little bit about why flat roofs fail and exactly how we can fix that.

Here are the top 6 reasons we see flat roofs fail. So poor drainage and slope. Older buildings, especially in Calgary, that were designed to be flat tend to pond. If the ponding water lasts longer than 72 hours under normal conditions, that can have a severe impact on the lifespan of the roof. As long as the roof was installed extremely well, all it will do is impact the lifespan of the overall system. But if the roof was installed poorly and there's workmanship issues, then the water will start making its way into seams or penetrations or cracks in the roof. especially as it ages, and then the freeze-thaw cycles start to impact those areas and can pop them apart and allow water to start entering the system, which will allow roof leaks to get into your home. What do you not normally hear from a roofing company in regards to this? Well, if we're showing up to re-roof your home, a lot of the times people won't mention the cost of what it would take to correct the ponding. Some systems like our spray foam systems, we can work to correct some of the ponding as we do the roof. But with conventional roofing systems, the only way to really correct that ponding is to get a slope package made for the roof, which can involve all kinds of other issues, including massively increased cost, additional construction to compensate for the height of the slope package, and a bunch of other details that most homeowners, A, don't anticipate from a cost factor standpoint or from a construction standpoint. Patch culture. Patches can work really effectively on your roof if your roof system isn't too old. The problem with this is those patches are only designed to last temporarily, so sometimes up to a year, maybe 2 years at the most, and then they're going to fail. And then they're going to get another patch, and then another patch, and another patch, and it's going to get to the point where there's just too many temporary patches on the roof. Nothing was ever repaired properly, and the roof is going to have to get redone. So system failure. All roofs, like, or all roof products have a life cycle, and at certain points it's just going to get too far gone to repair. The roofing system you choose, regardless of what it is or what suits your building best, is going to be largely dependent on the install and the quality of that install. You want to make sure that the roofing company knows what they're doing and they can install that product properly, because a failure A failure in installation is just going to lead to a whole sea of problems and your roof is going to fail completely prematurely, and then you're going to have to pay another company to come in and fix it or replace the roof entirely. We're going to be releasing a video later this year that's going to detail the differences in the roof systems that are available in, in our market here. Your roofing company should always work with you to come up with the best solution for your building, so make sure you subscribe and we'll go over that with you. Okay, so hidden moisture. So whenever you're looking at doing a permanent repair, a roof overlay, or just replacing the membrane on your roof, we want to make sure that there's no hidden moisture in the roofing system or in the substrate we're going to. If there's any hidden moisture, it's going to cause all kinds of issues from blistering to delamination to possibly even structural damage. So we need to get on that roof, we need to do an inspection, sometimes we even need to do cut tests to make sure That no moisture is going to get trapped inside that roof system. So this is why we just don't quote things from Google Earth. Sometimes we have to get our boots on the roof to ensure that the conditions are correct for the system that we're quoting you. There's a lot of myths about warranties out there. A lot of people think warranties are useless or they've had trouble getting a claim in the past. There's 2 different types of warranties. You get a material warranty and you get a workmanship warranty. So when it comes to material warranties, Having actual material failure is extremely rare. It's like the unicorn in the roofing industry. Materials are made to such high standards nowadays, they almost never fail. 99% of the time, the roof is failing because it was installed properly— improperly, sorry, installed wrong. So it's always a workmanship issue, and that way, that means you need to really have a good roofing contractor that you trust, that you know is going to stand by their warranty, Nobody's perfect, everybody makes mistakes, but you want somebody that's gonna make sure they own up to their mistakes and they're gonna come back and they're gonna fix your roof for you and honor that warranty. And especially be wary of companies that are only offering workmanship warranty for less than 5 years. So Calgary has a very unique climate. We see massive temperature swings here, we see crazy freeze-thaw cycles, we see ice damming, we see snow completely out of season. And we see crazy storms accompanied with super high winds, so the roof has to go through a lot of abuse. We also see more UV than almost anywhere else in Canada, so the UV damage and all these things are really rough on the roof systems. Every so often we see these other systems coming out of different places. They just don't work here because the climate in Phoenix or the climate in Vegas is completely different than the climate here, and those materials just don't stand up to our weather. The question people need to ask when considering a roofing contractor is, do they know what they're doing? Have they installed these products before? How long have they been installing these products? And lastly, at the end of the day, you need to decide what's best for you and your building and then work with that roofing contractor to come up with a solution that works best for you. You're gonna throw it at me? You're gonna throw it at— roofing foam. Okay, so this is where spray foam roofing comes into play. Spray-applied polyurethane roofing foam systems go on at about an inch and a half, and they are probably one of the most cost-effective solutions if your roof qualifies for it. That, i.e., it's not been leaking too much, there's not too much trapped moisture in the system. If there's a little bit, that's okay, we can cut that out and work around that. We can overlay your roof once we clean it up and make sure it's viable. You're adding 1.5 inches of roofing foam, which adds around an R-9 of insulation value to your home, which is always a great bonus. And then on top of that, we put 2 layers of silicone coating and we embed ceramic granules into that. What that does is it protects, gives that roofing system protection from the elements. Now, 3-pound density is super firm, totally walkable, not an issue there. Spray foam roofing does have a bit of a stigma in the industry. There was a number of people that were doing it very poorly when it first came to market here in Alberta. And they weren't doing a very good job. So there's very poor installs, they weren't preparing the roof surface properly, they were overlaying roofs that were completely saturated with water, and they were using the wrong coatings on the surface of that foam, which means that the foam just didn't last its lifespan like it was supposed to. And that creates a bit of a stigma, but as with anything, as long as it's installed properly and done properly, It's going to last its lifespan. We also have a 10-year warranty on the system, and we have an optional yearly roof walk program that will ensure somebody is on that roof every single year to make sure it's maintained for the warranty period. And then there's an option at the end of the warranty period where if you want to do new silicone and new granules, as long as that roof has been maintained, you get a brand new 10-year warranty. It's not quite as durable, But with the yearly inspection program, it covers things like minor dings and damage that may occur to the roof, but it is still very durable and it's very, very easy to repair. So for a lot of our clients, it's a really good option. So we see brand new roofs fail all the time, and the reason is always because of the workmanship, not material. So it doesn't matter what system that you pick, what matters is that you Make sure that it's suitable for the job that you're trying to achieve. We always want to work with the customer to make sure we're installing the best material for the project in mind, but as long as the material is installed properly, you're not going to have any issues.

If you have a flat roof, don't just ask yourself what is the cheapest fix. Ask, you know, does it matter if you just patch it? Can you repair it? Do you need to do the whole system? Because you know what, the right system for your house is going to work obviously the best for you, and you want to know what the Exactly that is before you start the process. If you want help figuring out what's the best solution for you, uh, so you don't have to pay for this twice or even thrice, well, definitely, uh, reach out to us. And if you like this type of content, we're going to ask that you subscribe to this channel to get more great content like this. Follow us along for maybe information on how to fix that nagging concrete issue so you're not tripping over it this summer and hitting it with a shovel this winter.