Roofs in Los Angeles, San Diego, and the surrounding Southern California regions, can be re-coated to extend the warranty originally provided in the final year of the warranty coverage. Some coating manufacturers offer five (5) year and ten (10) year extensions of warranty coverage. What is the value of warranty coverage? When all conditions are [...]
Archive | Roofing
RSS feed for this section
Evaluating your soggy roof sandwich
An in-service flat (low-sloped) roof can be an ugly thing! These roofs are very common in Southern California. This roof evidences many types of what we roof inspector types call: failure mechanisms. The roof as it stands has been coated, in the past, with an aluminum asphalt emulsion. All flat roofs should be evaluated by [...]
Roof Removal or Salvage?
An existing Class A fire rated roof, in the greater Los Angeles, San Diego and surrounding Southern California areas, may be salvageable as part of a new protected membrane roof (PMR) assembly. The key to success is diagnostic testing by a professional third party roof consultant. This is a view of an existing roof in [...]
Roof Leaks caused by dish antennas
A typical mounting solution by an installer of dish antennas, in Southern California, is seen in these photographs. Each mounting bracket plate has (4) holes, through which pass (4) fasteners (bolts). These bolts penetrate through the roof material into a concealed wood nailer. The threads on the bolts allow precipitation to wick and funnel the [...]
Rooftop Mounted Equipment
Many buildings, especially in the greater Los Angeles and surrounding Southern California areas, use recessed flat roofs as locations for the HVAC service equipment. These wells are designed to screen from view at ground level, any unsightly service equipment. The flat roofing surrounding these units, in these crowded areas, eventually fails causing leaks. Unit vibration, improperly [...]
Retro-fit roofs… but verify
Existing asphalt roofs, in Southern California, can be successfully Retro-Fitted with fluid applied ‘recovery’ systems or coated spray-applied polyurethane foam insulation. Project preliminaries include vacuuming all loose gravel and accumulated dirt off the surfaces. This photo shows a typical gravel vacuum operation: The next stage is crucial to success. The diagnostic inspection using non destructive [...]
Insulation Inspection is a must
It is always a must to include a third party inspector to assure the quality of a spray applied polyurethane insulation application. In this picture the inspector uses a standard foam insulation depth gauge to assure the minimum 1” thickness of the application. The final inspection also utilizes an optical comparator to check the dry [...]
When roofing goes wrong…
This Condominium building in the Los Angeles area had been installed with a recovery system, or coating on top of the existing asphalt roof. Unfortunately, the Home Owners Association did not utilize a Consultant when the Roof work was done. AW Consultants were called after the fact and asked how to fix the ponding water [...]
