Buildings Magazine - September 2017

Take a cue from these seven roofing projects, each of which required creative solutions to finish on time and within budget while still delivering the promised results. All seven faced high hurdles for completion and cleared them with ease thanks to innovative roofing strategies and the right product choices.

1) Be Flexible When Your
Timeline Isn’t

Unforeseen obstacles can sometimes lead to new discoveries. At Smith Springs Elementary School in Antioch, TN, bad weather pushed back the roof’s installation by more than 50 days.

The original specifications called for
How the right specs can make all the difference for roofs with tough requirements
7 Tricky Roofing Problems
The Solutions Behind
HUNDREDS OF INCHES OF RAIN annually made it a challenge
to replace the roof at Ketchikan High School. Ultimately, the
school board opted for a tough KEE membrane.
A SELF-BONDING MEMBRANE replaced the fully adhered
product that was originally specified for Smith Springs
Elementary School in Antioch, TN.
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76,000 square feet of fully adhered EPDM, but with the beginning of the school year looming, Porter Roofing Contractors needed to catch up so that the school’s 800 students would have a roof on their new school. Instead of the fully adhered product, a self-adhered version was substituted.

The self-bonding membrane didn’t need a
separate adhesive application followed by
waiting for flash off, so five people could
put down one 10- by 100-foot roll in about
12 minutes, a job that would have taken
roughly 30 with a fully adhered product.
“We could put down about 25,000 to
30,000 square feet a day with a six-man
crew. We could have never done that pro-
duction with standard bonding adhesives,”

Out-of-the-way locations, extreme weather and short schedules impose difficult restrictions on roofing projects. FMs who are preparing for a re-cover or re-roofing installation may find their choices limited to certain materials or specifications that can stand up to their building’s unique challenges.