Saturday, August 10, 2013

Typical Flat Roof in Miami, FL.


Flat roof rotten wood replacement
It seems everyone in Miami has a flat roof addition on the back of their home over a master suite, Florida Room or patio area. This flat roof we did in south Miami-Dade was over a back porch and tied into an old concrete tile roof which was done soon after Hurricane Andrew struck South Florida in 1992. I saw some problems with it, most notably exposed 90 lb. underlayment in the valleys. The 90 was crumbly and it’s just a matter of time before water rots out the valley metal and causes leaks – bad leaks. The client had done his own bull & membrane “fix” in two valleys on the front side and planned to do the same to the valley that tied into the flat after we finished. Okay . . .


Miami-Dade tin-cap pattern for flat roofs
There were several leaks near the tie-in and at the perimeter of the flat and it was apparent this roof was another example of the shoddy work that was going on after Andrew. No primed metal at the edges and the tie-in was such a joke that to describe it would risk losing the reader. So we removed two rows of tile at the tie-in so we could just cut that whole mess out of there.
There was plenty of rotten plywood, 3 sheets on a 460’ sq. deck, so much so that we flirted with Miami-Dade’s 25% rule which calls for complete re-sheathing when over 25% needs to be replaced – it was close. Then the entire deck was re-nailed to code. Two plies of GAF Gafglas base sheet were tin-capped to code, a 10” strip applied at the perimeter under 3”x3” 26ga. galvanized drip-edge nailed every 4”oc, which was then primed.                                                                         
Installing concrete roof tiles at the tie-in 
Then we installed a layer of GAF Ruberoid Torch Granule and painted it with Karnak 97 Aluminum Roof Coating (sorry, no pictures of that) to get our fire rating and we were done. Piece of cake, oh – and put back one row of tile at the tie-in. If you get the impression we do a lot of these back yard flat roofs – we do.

By Michael Slattery
Finished flat roof in Miami . . .almost . . .


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5 comments:

Unknown said...

Great job. It is good to see someone who knows what they are doing and a job done right. It is also great to read and see someone who can quote the causes of leakage in post Andrew roof repairs.

Roofer Mike said...

I could write a book on all the lousy roofing I've seen as a result of Andrew. Thousands became roofers over night . . .

bob said...

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Carma Uk roofing said...


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