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At Family Roofing, we take great pride in our experience, expertise, quality and customer service. It is our mission to provide excellent workmanship and complete customer satisfaction from start to completion of a project. Our reputation is based on service, safety and quality, regardless of how large or small the job.
Common Flat Roof Problems
Flat roofs are known as being problematic, with many suffering leaks. However, problems with leaking flat roofs are usually as a result of either poor workmanship installing the roof membrane, poor maintenance by the building owner or as a result of age. A well designed and waterproofed flat roof should not cause problems or leak. Is a flat roof actually flat? No. For clarity, flat roofs actually have a slight slope to allow rain water to drain off the roof. They seem flat, when compared with more traditional steeply sloped roofs. The slope should be a minimum of 1 in 80, but in practice a minimum slope of 1 to 40 should be used to allow for deflection of the roof and for normal building tolerances.
Pooling or Standing Water
Pooling or standing water is the water that accumulates on your roof that doesn’t drain within 72 hours. In most cases, this issue occurs because your roof is too flat. There needs to be some level of slope so that the water can make its way to a drainage spout. If you run into this problem, there is a good chance that your home will end up with serious structural damage to your building if the issue is not fixed fairly quickly.
Blistering or Alligatoring
Blistering (sometimes called alligatoring) is a common issue for flat roofs. This is when the roof’s membrane pulls away from the layer that is below it (like a blister). Extreme heat during the day will make moisture in the membrane expand. Damage in this case is most often related to cracks that are formed from the membrane movement.
Blistering or Alligatoring
Thermal movement occurs when your roof expands and contracts with the daily heating and cooling cycle. This is a major problem in Las Vegas, where extreme temperature differences can occur within a single day and across the year. As you can imagine, this kind of regular movement of the roof eventually causes cracks that will allow water to leak into your building.
Roof Buckling
The membrane on a flat roof is one single piece, which means it can warp over time as your building settles into place. Once your roof’s buckling becomes visible to the naked eye, it has reached the end of its life. If the roof is buckling to an extreme measure, it could fall through the building, potentially causing serious harm to those inside.
Separated or Exposed Layers
When a membrane layer of your flat roof becomes separated from the layer below it, your building becomes exposed to leaks. This problem typically occurs due to standing water and is similar to blistering. However, separated or exposed layers may not always be as visibly obvious. For this reason, it’s a good idea to bring out professional roofers for regular roof maintenance check-ups to help you spot exposed layers before they turn into a larger problem.
Low-Quality Flashing
Flashing is designed to direct water away from critical areas of the roof. If your roof installation was improperly equipped with low-quality flashing, there’s a good chance that water is collecting in all the wrong spots. As you might imagine, the damage from this issue can be wide ranging depending on how poorly your flashing was installed.
Cracks in the Roof
Cracks can occur on a flat roof for a variety of reasons that we mentioned above. Whether it’s from pooling water, blistering, thermal movement, or roof buckling, cracks are by far one of the most common problems that you will run into with a flat roof. Again, without regular roof maintenance, water will find its way through these cracks, causing damage over time to the inside of your building.
Exposure
Exposure is essentially the root of all flat roof problems. Since a building’s roof is constantly exposed to the sun and other elements, damage from the outside world is inevitable. No roofing material, no matter how durable, can last forever. Common flat roof issues include over-exposure to the sun, lightning strikes, freezing, hail, and wind damage or wind-driven debris. There are even less common exposure issues such as oil damage in restaurants or exposure from outside pollutants and chemicals.
Shrinkage
Shrinkage occurs on flat roofs made from synthetic rubber membranes, such as EPDM. It causes seams to delaminate and pull apart eventually allowing small openings to form in the roof surface. Though EPDM is a popular choice in the construction of flat roofs due to its durability, all EPDM roofs will eventually experience shrinkage. Natural shrinkage can also be inadvertently accelerated by errors in the manufacturing or installation of the roof membrane.
Neglecting Maintenance
Perhaps the single biggest cause of premature roof failure is forgetting to perform routine maintenance. The majority of flat roof problems are easily preventable with a routine maintenance plan and roof inspections.
