A Zen koan, or mystical proverb, asks you to tell the sound of one hand clapping. Koans are not meant to have literal answers, but your roof may be silently signalling distress as “loudly” as the sound of that one hand clapping.
Real Sounds
Flat roofs can make real sounds when stressed, usually from temperature changes. For example, a re-roof job badly done can cause your roof to make popping, snapping noises. The old roof beneath the re-roof is struggling under the new roof’s weight.
Creaks and cracking can be from membrane that heated all day and begins contracting in the afternoon, tugging on mechanical fasteners. The roof deck itself will swell and contract, often causing wood to creak.
Intuitive Sounds
What is your roof silently screaming to you? If you walk the surface and see bleached surfaces, your roof is telling you it got sunburned, and needs some cooling relief. Consider heat-reflective spray coatings to repel infrared heat that breaks down roofing chemicals. Reflective coatings also help to lower your cooling bills.
Crazing (alligatoring or cracking) in the top surface reveals your roof’s age. It is silently begging for a facelift: a thorough cleaning and waterproof coating. The commercial roof repair Fort Lauderdale businesses invest in usually will add years of useful service to an alligatored roof.
Alarms
Some roofs are not just groaning and moaning, they are sending up loud alarms, if only you could hear them. Sometimes the commercial roof repair Fort Lauderdale businesses request comes too late; if only the building manager had contacted a roofer a few months earlier, an expensive new roof could have instead been a thorough cleaning and repair job.
Flat roofing emergencies are signaled by water infiltration, clogged drains, damage to the underlying roof deck or blunt impact. These are all alarm bells that should tell you to act quickly.
We end with another koan, this one about roofs … we think:
“As the roof was leaking, a Zen Master told two monks to bring something to catch the water. One brought a tub, the other a basket. The first was severely reprimanded, the second highly praised.”
Neither monk seems to have thought to repair the roof. If you think you can hear your roof begging for help, give PSI Roofing a call today. We can “listen” and look and give sound advice, and that could be music to your ears.
