You are responsible for maintaining the value and usability of commercial property. That is an enormous responsibility. Who can you enlist to spread the burden? Your local, reliable commercial roofing company can help you protect a business by performing diligent roof maintenance.
Roof Maintenance Explained
Everything humans build requires maintenance. Commercial roofing is no different. Over time, all roofing materials degrade, erode, or evaporate. Roof maintenance is careful, intentional upkeep of your company’s roof, with an eye toward lengthening its overall lifespan.
Roof maintenance involves regular inspection. Those inspections uncover small repair projects which can be performed quickly and efficiently, preventing large-scale (and expensive!) repairs.
Roof maintenance involves unscheduled inspections after strong Florida storms. A year’s worth of small repairs can be undone overnight by high winds, heavy rains, or blunt force impact from debris.
Roof maintenance is more than just thorough cleaning. For every business owner who shrugs and asks, “What is roof maintenance?” dozens of other savvy commercial property owners are eager to get a quality crew up on the roof to keep it in good condition. Why? Because money invested in roof maintenance is a new roof deferred.
After a semiannual inspection, your partner in roof protection can arrange a priority list, with cost estimates, for the repairs you may need. Sure, cleaning is part of the process, but some cleaning simply reveals deeper issues that need immediate treatment.
An open seam, for example, may not be so bad that water floods your inventory shelves below. Yet it can be open enough that the Fort Lauderdale humidity sneaks inside, robbing your central air conditioning system of efficiency.
Nothing Gets By
A clogged internal drain can be resolved quickly, but it may reveal rot around the strainer, requiring equally quick repair work. Left unchecked, it can lead to water infiltration, soggy insulation, and widespread damage.
Roof maintenance is, then, more than just a quick poke around a few times a year. It is methodical. By enlisting the same roofer year in and year out, you get the most data and the best record of your roof’s overall health. Photographs, warranties, and written documents all combine to help you and your roofer map out a path forward.
With regular roof maintenance performed by the same company, nothing gets by either your crew or your roofer. Several seasons of small repairs, at a fraction of the cost of a new roof, can buy your company many more years of faithful service from a well-maintained roof.
The Importance of Roof Maintenance
Experts at Facilities Net identify three important questions to ask yourself in designing a roof maintenance program.
- What does a clean roof look like? How are your facilities crews and local, dependable roofer working together to keep the roof clean of organic material, safe from forgotten tools and hardware, and free of wind-borne debris?
- What training do your crews receive? Successful roof maintenance programs vary depending on the roofing material used. Facilities crews should know how to clean PVC, for example, differently from BUR.
- How are you controlling access? A clean roof will not stay clean if no control is implemented to prevent random employees, third-party vendors, and curious visitors from prowling around your company’s roof.
Roof maintenance and roof assets management are critical for the safety and security of your building. A clean, well-maintained roof will protect inventory, expensive equipment, employees and visitors alike.
One reason why roof maintenance is important for your business is because you build a strong relationship with the local roofer you may depend upon for emergency repairs, roof replacement, or building expansion. Through semiannual inspections and quarterly repair visits, you and your facilities crews begin to know what to expect from the roofer.
Perhaps more important, your roofer becomes familiar with your building. Running records can document trouble spots, so the roofer can more easily assist during major projects.
Stormy Relationship
With a roof maintenance program, you and your roofer can keep up with the worst weather Fort Lauderdale suffers: hurricanes. Few other weather systems take the toll on commercial roofs the way hurricanes do. Combining wind, changes in air pressure, hard-driven rain, and debris tossed against the roof surface, a few minutes of a hurricane’s power can overwhelm a poorly maintained roof.
With good roof maintenance, your roof will get the pre-storm care it needs. Your roofer can also respond quickly after the wind dies down to check the roof, clean up from the storm, and make necessary post-storm repairs.
Conscientious roof maintenance begins with a call to PSI Roofing, or by contacting our office today. PSI Roofing has been serving the commercial roofing needs of the Fort Lauderdale area for nearly a quarter century. Let us design a roof maintenance program for your business.
