Real Life Roofing HORROR Story

It’s a familiar scene from late night television: An unwary peasant, out on a moonlit night, hears an ominous sound and turns. . . There stands a vampire or werewolf. But not all horror stories are safely confined to the television set or movie screen. When it comes to the roof, blisters and leaks can be almost as terrifying as the demons of the night — and far more real.

In many cases, these real-world roofing horror stories teach important lessons; partly because they are recurrent nightmares for those of us in commercial real estate and construction.

Consider this example.
A leaky structural standing seam metal roof was only 10 years old — not old for a metal roof — but it had leaked on and off since it was installed. Because of the nature of the primary tenant, even a small amount of leakage was unacceptable.

The owner hired a roof consultant to provide plans and specifications for re-roofing the building. Because it was not feasible to remove the structural standing seam metal roof, leaving the building wide open to the weather, three separate schemes were designed to get the best price for the new roof; all were lightweight to avoid overloading the pre-engineered structure.

Because the owner also wanted to eliminate the interior gutter system, a source of much of the leakage, the drainage was redesigned to take advantage of the existing overflows, making them the primary drainage. The construction documents detailed three new overflows at each drain to be added to the precast concrete parapets to assure that water on the roof would be quickly removed. The new deck was to be supported by steel angles attached to the concrete walls.

The roof was bid without the involvement of the consultant and installed by a contractor out of Miami. Fifteen months later, it collapsed following a night of heavy rain. The original consultant was called back to determine what had happened. One look at the building from the outside told the whole story. Both the overflows and the steel angles intended to support the new deck had been eliminated by “value engineering” between the owner and this unnamed subpar contractor, who was not familiar with the design and did not understand why it was done the way it was.

Because the overflows were not installed, the estimated 9 inches of rain from the previous night could not exit through the main drainage fast enough. The weight of the water accumulated at the drain, where it overstressed the deck and the structure, and the building came down at a cost of about $2 million.

Moral: Be careful of who you trust for your roofing system.