Tramex Talks - John Hull - Dec Scanner and Commercial Roof Moisture Surveys

John Hull, the President of Gulf Infrared, LLC, talks about the Tramex Dec Scanner and the necessity of commercial roof moisture surveys.

You know, what we see out in the industry, in the NRCA, that's the national roofing contractors association, they've got a staff that I've seen bounced around for the past 15 years, that only 32 percent of all roofs that were torn off and replaced, needed to be torn off and replaced. So, two-thirds of the commercial roofs that are torn off and thrown into landfills probably would have been restoration candidates had they done a little bit of forensic investigation and really understood their options.

Why do we perform roof moisture surveys? Well, as I mentioned earlier, you know, trapped moisture can greatly increase the operating costs and reduce the life expectancy of a roof. So, as water heats within the roof, it turns into water vapor, and the vapor expands creating pressure within that roof system, okay? This water is either going to go down into the building, in the building cavity, or it's going to go up, I mean typically, you know, that's pretty simple. When it goes up, we see what we have over here (image). I mean, this is hot-mopped asphalt roof covering, and the pressure within that roof system has caused blisters and forced that membrane to separate from its substrate. That's, I see that every day, okay. The other picture obviously is, you know, steel deck and what, trapped moisture over a long time, it's corrosion. You know, I don't want to be walking on decks like that! And how often do we have, you know, maintenance people, HVAC people, walking on roofs that there might be a two or three-foot section of roof deck corroded. Extremely dangerous. 

So, a lot of very very compelling reasons for owners and property managers to do regular moisture surveys on roofs. You know, trapped moisture roof is detrimental to many building components, obviously, the roofing materials. You'll have energy loss, you'll have a premature failure with the insulation, you know, the thermal resistance the R-value is greatly reduced when it's wet and saturated, and that insulation gets compacted. You could have air quality issues, you know. You talked about that yesterday, we get that funnel mold up in the roof system as well. HVAC equipment, you know, when we've got a hot roof or a roof that's made, you know, kind of holding heat, and that HVAC equipment's up on the roof, you know, I go up on roofs all the time and we'll go up on an asphalt roof, and I'll take a roof temperature reading and it might be 180-degrees F. Well, you coat or put a cool roof on there, it drops it maybe to 100 degrees F. So, you're sucking in 100-degree air instead of 180-degree air into that, into the HVAC equipment. That's going to make that equipment last a whole lot longer with a whole lot less maintenance. So, there are a lot of other things that, you know, I like to call them "the peripheral effects" of what a wet or a damp roof can cause. Still, I like the impedance scanner, I love the Deck Scanner. I think, you know, it can really survey about any type of roof out there. You just have to know how to get the machine set properly and understand what the machine's telling you.