Well… the first thing you should do is call Foam Roof Solutions immediately for a free phone consultation and set up an appointment for one of our experts to com evaluate the roof. However, this blog post is to help educate you, so you can look for a few obvious things on your own.
You can immediately tell if a foam roof has been neglected (see picture above). What you’re seeing in the picture is a lot of exposed foam. The brown area is where the UV coating has been burnt away by the sun and now exposes the polyurethane foam underneath. The foam is for insulation and water barrier and the coating is for UV protection. Don’t let anyone tell you that the acrylic or silicone coating over foam is going to help stop leaks, ’cause it won’t.
Multiple bird pecking or small penetrations. The UV coating will almost always start to thin around the perimeter of your roof. You can see in the picture above, that a small bird peck has started to form. Bird pecks start to form when the birds know your coating is wearing thin. They like to cradle nuts and eat out the meat. Ravens are very smart. They will throw the shell of the nut off the roof before they leave. Bird pecks are very uncommon if your roof has the proper amount of coating and sometimes a loose, silicon gravel can be embedded in a new top-coat to eliminate the problem. If you see bird pecks in your roof you should contact info@foamroofsolutions.com. There can be some very inexpensive (temporary) solutions to keep the bird peck areas from getting worse.
Multiple blistering. If your roof (whether residential or commercial) has lots of small, medium or large sized blisters, you may want to contact us regarding this. The blisters aren’t causing leaks! The blisters are surface blisters and there is plenty of foam underneath. The problem with multiple blisters is that you may have had a bad product sprayed or the company who sprayed the original roof had settings that were “off ratio”. In any case, when your roof is restored back to new, all blisters will be repaired and you’ll never know they were there before.
Separation from the substrate. If you’re walking on your roof and you can feel a “bounce” under your feet, the foam is probably separating from the substrate (the material the foam was sprayed to). Sometimes this is a problem and other times it’s not. Foam is a solid, seamless insulation blanket that covers the entire home. It becomes its own structure. Therefore, a little separation is not always a bad deal.
For more information regarding your existing foam roof, please contact gus@foamroofsolutions.com or give him a call at (800) 878-1480.