Flat Roof Replacement - Day 3: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

Day 3 of the roof replacement started very wet, with storms having dumped a ton of water and a lot of ponding to sweep off. The goal for day 3 was to work on half of the north side of the roof, or what you see to the right. This area is entirely over our kitchen.







I was fortunate to be home for a bit in the morning to catch some of the initial tear off. Pulling up the existing membrane reveals the anticipated moistness underneath. You can see the juicy fiberboard for the most part. The cutout beyond is the drain. The original built up roof can be seen exposed beyond. When you step on the exposed fiberboard, water literally squeezes out.

This was the scene upon getting home from work later on Day 3. Seeing as this was the first area to receive 'tapered' insulation, I wasn't quite sure what to expect. About half the roof has new installation and membrane on it at this point.

Here's a better shot that shows the angular valleys that run to the new downspout boot. We had stainless steel boots custom fabricated for our four downspouts. Basically a layer of 1/8" per 1'-0" tapered underlies the area. Then 'crickets' or mini pitched roofs as I like to call them slope to the valleys at 1/4" per 1'-0". The valleys, in theory slope about 1/8" per 1'-0" because of the underlying tapered insulation. This insulation carries about R-5 per inch of thickness. In areas we will have several inches, add this to the R-19 batt and existing construction. We are making leaps and bounds in R value.

Here's a close up of the new stainless drain. As you can see, the drain has a lap joint to seal the EPDM roof to the stainless. Another layer of lap seal will go down before all is said and done. The new downspout boots are extra long to provide plenty of purchase space for the downspouts to overlap.

Although it looks kinda nasty, here's the new condition where our flat roof wraps around the sloped roof. Beyond our large windows can be seen. The painter will paint over the visible clutter when the painting is done following the roof. All in all a much better installation than before.

Over at the chimney, the inital new termination installation started. This is a critical spot to ensure no water can leak down the chimney. We had a bit of water damage in our studio at the other end of the chimney where water had rotted away the roof joists and the plaster below.

The bad, here's a shot at the existing fascia. It's in pretty rough shape in spots, you can see here the corner isn't exactly aligning. I'll be grabbing a few pieces of redwood to let the roofers replace as needed. Hopefully this will scrape and clean up nicely. A coat of paint can do wonders.

More bad, here's the mostly concealed from street view of the sloped roof fascia. With the rotted piece laying on the roof, this is where I'm thinking some replacement is in order. One nice thing is the flat EPDM roof area extends up and is tucked behind the upper fascia board.

The ugly. Well, there's not much optimism in this photo. After taking a good look at the dry install, my eyes seemed to be fooling me, so I grabbed my 4' level and immediately realized something wasn't right with the tapered insulation slope. After bringing the hose up onto the roof and letting loose, it's easy to see what's not working. Ponding is exactly what we don't want. Ponding leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to me wishing I had a pitched roof. That said I think since this photo was taken we have worked out a solution with the roof company and will be able to report more soon. Be sure to stay even more caught up with photos on CincinnatiModernation's facebook page, be sure to 'like' it.