Hi everyone, this week we were out in London Ontario in the middle of town, working on a walk out porch deck. The client said they needed our help as the deck was in a state of disrepair.
This was one of our trickier and more complex home flat roof replacements, and was the most rotted out flat roof and deck system our team had seen.
Unfortunately this roof had been leaking for a very long time, and so upon our inspection we could see that the substrate and the framing had completely rotted out, and the insulation was soaked.
So our team go right to work removing the deck boards, removing the flat roof membrane and substrate, and inspect the underneath of the roof to see what needed replacing. You can see from the video and images, the roof had been leaking so long the whole flat roof system was soaking wet.
The 2 x 10 joists were rotted, roof trusses are rotted, OSB board has deteriorated and it is flaking (it shouldn’t have been used in the first place as as soon as the OSB chipboard gets wet the material deteriorates rapidly). The wood was so rotted we even found carpenter ants in the roof, which is a sign that the roof has been compromised for a long time.
There were some recoverable or usable pieces of material, but much of the system needing reframing, with new 2 x 10’s, new roof trusses, new fibreglass insulation and new plywood, with a new membrane, metal flashing and cap sheet.
We wanted to do this in stages just to make sure when we left each day the roof was protected against the elements, so we did the tear out over 2 days.
We reframed the outside, and installed the new joists and roof trusses, adding R20 insulation before putting the plywood down.
We framed in the outside, adding R20 insulation, then we finished off the rest of the flat roof system, and added back the deck boards.
We hope you find these videos educational, and if you’re a homeowner, that it gives you a bit of a warning. Sometimes flat roof leaks can be tricky, and people want to save money by doing cheap fixes. But if flat roof leaks aren’t handled properly and early, the damage can be quite serious as well as unsafe.
So if you have a concern about your flat roof, and you’re in the SW Ontario area please reach out to your team and we would love to be of assistance.