Replies

1. 
   JeffBuck | Aug 22, 2003 11:29pm | #1

   a framed pitched roof.

   Jeff

   Buck Construction   Pittsburgh,PA

    Fine Carpentery.....While U Waite                  

1. 
   TrimButcher | Aug 22, 2003 11:32pm | #2

   Laughed out loud on that one, Jeff.  Thanks!

   Regards,

   Tim

1. 
   JeffBuck | Aug 23, 2003 02:48am | #5

   funny yes....

   But that IS my stock answer when asked about a flat roof repair.

   In my area.....just makes no sense at all ....considering the cost of doing it right.

   JeffBuck Construction   Pittsburgh,PA

    Fine Carpentery.....While U Waite                  

1. 
   Ruby | Aug 23, 2003 05:44am | #6

   Put a pitch roof on it is the best, really. Money saved.

   We have lived 30+ years in a house built by a first time GC that misread the plan and left the roof absolutely flat, all 55' by 33' of it.

   That house has had one leak since it was built and some forty years later and many roofers gone by it is still leaking.

   Some 7 years ago one roofer took all up to the wood and there was not track of where any water was getting in, reroofed it with a torched rubber membrane and that little pesky leak is still there, occassionally. Since we are in a drought and have been getting some 3" to 9" a year, it is moot question for now.

   If and when it starts to rain again, the powers that be will finally have to decide to put a gable roof over it and fix the interior plaster walls it has damaged.

   We do keep the canales clean and that leak doesn't happen after every rain, only once in a while.

   Putting that money into some sloped roof will be the best investment you can make. I don't know of any flat roofed house here that doesn't leak and most here have been changed to a pitch roof.

1. 
   Piffin | Aug 23, 2003 03:25pm | #7

   There are some architechtural designs that will look terrible when retrofitted with a pitched roof is my first reason for hesitating on that change. Southwestern Adobe is one that comes to mind. I have done a few that way too though.

   But for your roof, after all you describe, with a new rubber roof and the leak still in the same place with no signs on the wood deck below, I can pretty well gaurantee you that it is nopt the roof that is leaking. Eighter you have some sort of condensation problem or there is a flashing or wall problem someplace. I would be interested in seeing pictures and a further description of wherre the water enters and under what conditions..

   Excellence is its own reward!

2. 
   rjw | Aug 23, 2003 04:12pm | #8

   Good point: if you don't get the answer you're expecting when you ask a question, sometimes you need to ask a wider question*

   "Where is the roof leak?" 

   "Can't find one boss."

   "Hmmm.  Where is the water/moisture coming from?"

   FWIW, in my area I often find "leaks" are from condensation on a/c ducts.

   __________________

   Pirsig: ZAMM: Part 3:

   Truth traps are concerned with data that are apprehended .... For the most part these data are properly handled by conventional dualistic logic and the scientific method.... But there's one trap that isn't...the truth trap of yes-no logic.

   Yes and no -- this or that -- one or zero. On the basis of this elementary two-term discrimination, all human knowledge is built up. The demonstration of this is the computer memory which stores all its knowledge in the form of binary information. It contains ones and zeros, that's all.

   Because we're unaccustomed to it, we don't usually see that there's a third possible logical term equal to yes and no which is capable of expanding our understanding in an unrecognized direction. We don't even have a term for it, so I'll have to use the Japanese mu.

   Mu means ``no thing.'' ...[I]t points outside the process of dualistic discrimination. Mu simply says, ``No class; not one, not zero, not yes, not no.'' It states that the context of the question is such that a yes or no answer is in error and should not be given. ``Unask the question'' is what it says.

   Mu becomes appropriate when the context of the question becomes too small for the truth of the answer. When the Zen monk Joshu was asked whether a dog had a Buddha nature he said ``Mu,'' meaning that if he answered either way he was answering incorrectly. The Buddha nature cannot be captured by yes or no questions.

   That mu exists in the natural world investigated by science is evident. It's just that, as usual, we're trained not to see it by our heritage. For example, it's stated over and over again that computer circuits exhibit only two states, a voltage for ``one'' and a voltage for ``zero.'' That's silly!

   Any computer-electronics technician knows otherwise. Try to find a voltage representing one or zero when the power is off! The circuits are in a mu state.

   Religio-phobes should  stop reading here ....

   _______________________

   Worship is not an hour in a building; even in a building dedicated to God.

   Worship is an encounter with the holy presence of God!

   You milage may vary .....

3. 
   SamT | Aug 24, 2003 12:48am | #9

   Ever heard of Fuzzy Logic? It seems that Aristotle? thought that it was too hard to teach/understand, so he concentrated on binary logic instead. it sure would have prevented old what's his name from postulating that you can't gat anywhere cuz' you have to go half way first, etc.

   And computors operate interanlly on fuzzy logic since they do not wait for the signal to reach %100 of signal voltage, but rather the flips flop at some % of signal volts. some even flop at the fastest part of the transition to the other state. Transistional logic! I am going, ergo, I am there.

   SamT  |;>)

   True, the white man brought great change. But the varied fruits of his civilization, though highly colored and inviting, are sickening and deadening. And if it be the part of civilization to maim, rob, and thwart, then what is progress?

   I am going to venture that the man who sat on the ground in his tipi meditating on life and its meaning, accepting the kinship of all creatures, and acknowledging unity with the universe of things, was infusing into his being the true essence of civilization....

   Chief Luther Standing Bear, 1933,              From the Land of the Spotted Eagle, p.515

4. 
   rjw | Aug 24, 2003 12:55am | #10

   I am going, ergo, I am there.

   ROFLOL!_______________________

   Theophobes should  stop reading here ....

   _______________________

   Worship is not an hour in a building; even in a building dedicated to God.

   Worship is an encounter with the holy presence of God!

   You milage may vary .....

5. 
   Piffin | Aug 24, 2003 02:40am | #11

   I haven't started to go yet so I'm not that far gone.

   Excellence is its own reward!

6. 
   Ruby | Aug 24, 2003 04:26am | #12

   Well, we didn't think about condensation. It leaks only right after a rain, for about 30 minutes, but not after every rain!

   We had the house restuccoed (two coats of gray with mesh over any cracks and then an acrylic tan coat)  clear to over the parapets, thinking one of the little cracks may be the water's entry.

   We also have worked flashing and chimney over and even covered the top of it, since we don't use it.

   It doesn't leak with a snow melting on the roof, only with some rains.

   Since it is on one canale, we have worked it over and over, putting black stuff all around. thought of cutting the top off and slope the floor of it into it's spout, but have not gone that far.

   The spot that leaks is in the 1960 addition to the original house, that was built in 1936. Both houses are connected and the addition is lower, so that is another point of possible entry for that leak. The thinking was that if it was so, there would have been some water marks on the wood when they pulled all the roofing up. Since there were none, that must not be where that water is coming from.

   It is true that the SW look is not the same on a pitched roof, that is why it has not been changed, yet. It will look odd because the parapets will make it higher than a normal roof would be and the porches will look puny below.

   That house has been sold, it will be up to the next owner to do something. He is aware of that problem. He bought this place for the land and water, the house being very secondary to his interests but said he will give his roofers a chance at it.

   Last time I was in Raton, NM, I noticed that most roofs, that started as flat roofs, had been converted to different kinds of pitched ones. They are an interesting study on how to and not to go about it.<g>

   I imagine that the original poster here will have to go thru it's own learning process and maybe he will be lucky and get his roof fixed easily.

7. 
   Piffin | Aug 24, 2003 04:45am | #13

   OK, I give up. What is a canale?

   Since you leak after a rain,I'll agree it is not anything but a leak. That leaves discovering how.

   Is there a step down with a flashing at the area where the leak shows?

   The location at a new addition is telling. I have seen similar a lot of times where a small leak has existed forever and it only shows up when new work is added because the water used to weep out from between plys but is now trapped and forced to show itself.

   Does the house move around and settle again?

   An addition indicates a possible different foundation. That could take the stresses of frost and water differently and the biggest noticeable diff would be there at the junction. It might also explain why it would leak sometimes and not others. Wind or not when leaking and from what direction can also be a hint as to where it is coming in. Silly me! You don't get any wind down there.

   ;).

   Excellence is its own reward!

8. 
   Ruby | Aug 24, 2003 05:13am | #15

   We are the second windiest place in the US, averaging a grand total of 6 days a year that the wind doesn't blow. 30 m/hr is a breeze.

   Here they call canale the opening in the parapets that carries the water out of the enclosed flat roofs thru the walls and into a spout that drains it normally on a slab or flat rock on the grass/dirt. A gutter, maybe, if not a conventional one?

   There is not a step down, just maybe 1/2" to the flashed over wood of the spout, that I caulked well all around on one of the tries to stop the leak.

   They didn't seem to have filled the cinder blocks of the wall around that opening on the upper side, so I did with black stuff. Didn't help, the leak didn't come thru there.

   Don't think that the house moves and settles any since it did the first year. We are by a draw (a dry creek) and the buildings sit on a very solid sand dune.

   Good idea on that leak coming from the also flat roof on the first house and somehow getting into the addition, but not over the wood of it. If so, would it not be water marks where it travels thru on the ceilings, that seem to be plaster, as the walls are?

   Best I can tell, there is a rubber membrane with white tiny grains on it, maybe two layers of black thick "paper", some kind of plywood, rafters with more black paper, metal lath and plaster painted white for a ceiling, but don't take my work for it, I don't know about those materials. That last is what I seem to see thru the opening on the corner of the roof, where the old leak is.

   We did think of wind direction causing the leak but it is not raining enough to tell and our storms whip the rain around here too much.

   Last time it rained, in June, we had 1.35" one evening and it did leak, then 1.45" the next evening and it didn't leak! Now I wonder if the first rain swelled the wood and so no leak the second one.

   Has not rained since...Can't check for leaks when it doesn't rain.

2. 
   Piffin | Aug 23, 2003 12:37am | #3

   I've never considered roll roofing appropriate for a residence.

   Tool shed, carport, barn or warehouse but not a house.

   What pitch do you have and are there parapet walls? I know you said flat roof but I'm sure you meant low-slope. NOBODY builds a falt roof and then puts roll roofing on it, except maybe Mike, the crack addict from another thread.

   ;)

   You have several choices. EPDM, metal, modified bitumen, BUR, Polyglass, elastomeric with re-inforcing membrane, all depending on pitch, style and whether you are the one doing the work or contracting it out, but each of theses are likely to require either that you cover the rolled roof or that you tear it off down to the decking. Most of these products need a better surface than the old rolled to be installed onto.

   Jeff, you are sparkling tonight! New contract feels good ehya?

   .

   Excellence is its own reward!

3. 
   sungod | Aug 23, 2003 12:49am | #4

   Here in Los Angeles county the flat roofs alway leak because the owners never clear out the roof drains.  Flew over the city during a rain, there was lakes on roofs all over.   Lots of stupid flat roofs have no slope. They throw on gravel that makes it hard to find leaks and the rocks fill up the rain gutters.

1. 
   talkingdog | Aug 24, 2003 04:53am | #14

   One book that all building designers should be forced to read is Salvadori's "Why Buildings Fall Down", which is an illuminating analysis of some of the most famous building disasters in history, including the Kemper Arena. There's a great line in the Kemper chapter that goes something like, "one of the first rules of architecture should be to get the water off the roof as quickly as possible."

   I don't see how a flat roof with drains could possibly fulfill that criterion. IMO much better to simulate a flat roof with a parapet, put in as much slope as you can and drain the roof with an overhang and gutters at the back (where it will be conveniently out of the way of your magazine photo op). Get the water off the roof as quickly as possible.