Spray foam roofing in St. Albert has a local problem that hardly arises on an industrial park. The commercial roofs here are low-slope, they are frequently overhung by mature trees, and what falls off those trees has to go somewhere.
Leaves in the drains on a flat roof
A low-slope roof drains through a small number of outlets, and every one of them is a point of failure the moment something covers it. Under a mature canopy those drains fill with leaves, needles and seed every autumn, and where they are not cleared the water simply stays on the roof. Ponding works the covering harder than anything else does, it adds load the roof was not meant to carry continuously, and it is the single most common reason a St. Albert low-slope roof fails early.
Standing water in a climate that freezes it
Ponding is worse here than in a mild climate because the water does not simply sit, it freezes. That puts ice on a roof in a shape the drainage never intended, it works every seam as it expands, and when it thaws it finds whatever the ice opened. A membrane roof responds to that by failing at its joints, which is why seam failure is the recurring complaint on older flat roofs in this city.
Correcting slope while the roof is being done
This is where a sprayed system does something a sheet cannot. It can be built up locally, so a low spot can be filled and the water directed toward a drain as part of the work rather than being lived with for another twenty years. On a roof that has ponded for a decade that is frequently the actual fix, and it is worth asking about specifically, because a like-for-like replacement will reproduce the same puddle in the same place.
What the survey has to establish first
Nothing is quoted from the ground. Somebody goes up, opens the assembly and establishes what the existing layers are, whether they are wet, whether the deck is sound and whether a recover is viable. Wet insulation left under a new surface stays wet and the new roof fails early, so core samples are not a formality. On these buildings the survey also records where the water actually stands, because that is what the design has to answer.
Spray Foam Roofing St. Albert: Common Questions
How do you fix a roof that holds water after every rain? That is a drainage and slope problem, and a sprayed system can be built up locally to correct it.
Why do our roof seams keep failing? Standing water that freezes works every joint. A sprayed roof has no seams to work.
Do we have to tear the old roof off? Not always. The survey establishes whether a recover is sound, and that decision is worth real money.
Size the assembly with the R-value calculator, then get a free St. Albert quote. More on Spray Foam Roofing Alberta.