Welcome to the podcast of advanced commercial systems home with a roof nerves. Uh, today we’re having a podcast number 66, podcast number 66, oh, sorry about that. This is actually podcast number 67. I know time flies right? For 67 weeks. We had been bringing you our podcast every week, bringing in specific topics, specific aspects of what we do, what we’re about here with our roof nerds here with advanced commercial systems in commercial roofing broken Arrow this week. We have a great topic for you. And I said one of the simple ones, it’s one of the ones that you would probably think of the most. Um, what is commercial roof? A commercial roof, and what is commercial roofing all about? And uh, so a commercial roof, uh, in terminology is really many times. And just by the general paypal, uh, known as a flat roof in commercial roofing, broken Arrow, um, you know, just, uh, just a roof for a commercial building is really what it is.
Now, not every commercial building has a flat roof. Many times they might have what we call a steep slope roof that could be shingles or metal or you know, or you know, slate or whatever, um, or even tile. But yeah, a flat roof is a commercial roof for a commercial building and they’re often differentiated from residential roofs due to the fact that they have different types of functions. They perform, they, they really act differently and what they do. Um, let’s see. One example here. Um, let’s see. Uh, a commercial roof has to protect the building from weather, but many times the commercial roof also has to support large equipment. Um, I cannot tell you how many huge h vac units I have seen on flat roofs, commercial roofs. Um, and so that’s something that residential roofs hardly ever do, you know, especially steep slope roofs.
Uh, there is actually one commercial roof. I worked on a sputters here and Tulsa. It is a wonderful steak restaurant. If you ever want to get a good steak. And they have some HVAs units, a s h Vac units actually on the residential steep slope or there’s a commercial building, but they have roofs, roof HVC units on their steep slope shingle roof. And a few years ago, I remember now how unusual it was to see that. Um, but there was nowhere to put the, put the h vac units so they just had to put them up there. And that’s the one of the big aspects of a commercial roof, the amount of maintenance or mechanical equipment on a commercial roof. And so there’s a weather and rain and wind and so many things, but you know, then also the technical aspect of causing the building to have function and have functionability.
Um, and for this reason, commercial roofs, they’re made differently and they use a lot of different types of materials in commercial roofing broken arrow. And so you can give us a call if you have any questions today where our podcast is going to be a pretty long one. And so if you to give us a call, you can reach us at (918) 973-1010 or you can reach out to us on Facebook. Um, roof nerds. Tulsa is our Facebook page with advanced commercial systems. I guess you could probably search for advanced commercial systems and find that. And then you can also just shoot us an email. We see that pop up are here in front of us. We can answer questions that you can have while we received those. And that is uh, advanced. Okay. At cox.net is the email that you can shoot an email to.
So let’s go on to, um, contrary to that name. No flat roofs. You know, they say flat roofs, but really they’re not actually flat. Now, according to the National Roofing Contractors Association in RCA, a flat roof is not supposed to be flat. It’s suppose to have actually some slope to it. And so that’s why they’re not really called flat roofs. When you get technical, they’re called steep slope roofs or low sloped roofs. And so low sloped roofs should own a minimum, have every one foot, one eighth of an inch of a drop in slope. And so if you go eight feet, you should have one inch of a drop slow. So what I do is I just walk off every three steps, uh, which is to me about eight and a half to nine feet just on an average. So when I’m on a roof, I can walk. Every three steps should be close to one and you have a drop.
Uh, I’m used to walking off exactly three feet, so I’ll make my steps just a little smaller. And every three steps would be about one inch of a drop. Now it’s pretty obvious. A lot of times when you get on the commercial routes, you can see which way the roof is sloping in commercial roofing broken Arrow, and in commercial roofing torso. But I tell you many times I get on a roof I commercial roof, a flat roof that almost looks so flat. You can’t even tell which way it’s sloping. Those bother me a little bit because I know the amount of torrential rain we get here in Oklahoma, and I know the amount of rain that’s going to sit on that roof with a really, really hard rain. It’s going to have an inch of range just sitting on top of it, getting pounded, if not more than that.
And so that rain has to get off there as quickly as possible. Now, according to the National Roofing Contractors Association, uh, US, uh, um, a low slope roof should have the slope of one eighth of an inch per every linear foot going down so that the roof water that’s on the roof and any minimal ponding areas, all the waters should exit the roof within 24 or sometimes 48 hours. To me it depends on the roof system. I think with Mod Bitch, I want an off of there or built up, built up roofs. I wanted off of there in 24 hours. I think with PVC, single plies, um, it’s, it’s a different, it’s different with me because I think they’re better at ponding water. They’re better at holding water. And so with those guys, in my opinion, many years of doing this, I don’t mind at all if they’re on there, if the water can sit on their two days, three days before it gets off, that’s not a big deal.
Um, because I know with the roofs can, do I know what they can handle, especially when you’ve inspected them and you’ve seen the age and you’ve seen what level of deterioration are they at, how old are they? You get a good aspect of how long the water can sit up there before it causes a problem. But I’ll tell you, modified bitumen roofs here in commercial roofing, broken Arrow, those guys are absolutely not made for ponding. I just did some, uh, repairs in sand springs to a large building facility over there three years ago. And there were some low areas we did not realize were there. We didn’t build them up with fiber board the way that we should. And I every year, probably two or three times a year, cause I’m over there quite a bit in sand springs. Uh, we, I check those spots out because they are ponding and they, they’re holding water for more than a day.
So I’m continually checking those out, keep my eyes on him, making sure that we’re not having granule loss when you get a model by modified bitumen roof. Now to make that simpler for you, it’s actually just most commonly called a roll roofing in commercial roof, broken Arrow roll roofing many times is just that of a modified bitumen bitumen roof. With the granules on it looks like a big three foot wide single that’s a hundred foot row or 50 foot long that rolls out. And so that’s what roll roofing is and that’s what you even see that on the, on the back porches sometimes or people’s residential homes. And so when I see a modified bitumen roof, I don’t like to see much ponding now that was on a roof yesterday, doing some inspections, potentially going to do a full replacement on it or maybe a layover. We’re, we’re still working on the numbers to see where they come out.
And the roof probably had about, it was about 300 squares in size and probably had about 15 ponding areas. Really small pawning areas were dirt. You know when the water dries up and upon, an area of the dirt stays behind in commercial roofing, broken Arrow, and so what happens is if that sits that way, if we’re five to 10 years, those areas can completely deteriorate. Those granules will start coming off because the modified bitumen roof is not made for Pawnee. Now, if that were a TPO or a PVC, I’m not a big [inaudible] fan, so I’m not even going to mention them, but the single plies of EAP, of TPO and PVC, those can sit there for 15 years of ponding. I know one right now and apartment complex off of 41st and Garnett and I’ve been up there. I’ve done repairs on the roof and there is a large Pauline area that’s their 12 months out of the year.
Every single time I’ve gotten on the roof, there’s this large six inches of ponding water. Now I did not make this roof. They, they don’t want me to get in the water off and repairing the roof. It just sits there all the time and literally up to six inches deep and it’s not leaking. Now that is a TPO roof and and thanks the Lord, praise the Lord that it was welded correctly or it would be just pouring, I don’t know, probably 600 gallons. I mean I it’s a really large area. The spread out or no, maybe not that much. Maybe. Yeah, maybe a hundred gallons, 250 gallons of water would be poured into the building in commercial roofing, broken Arrow with advanced commercial systems. If you want to learn more about the best kind of roofs or, or what we can do through assist you, you do know.
Please keep in mind as we go through this podcast and we do this every week, I always want to mention one thing. One of the aspects of what we do is we bring a 24 hour Ruth evaluation to you. Now that’s not just so showing up and walking up there and then walking down and say, oh your roof’s good or your roofs bat. No, we take pictures. We take a full detailed walkthrough of video with audio detailed, uh, descriptively just describing what’s going on with every aspect of the roof, the parapet walls. Are there any leaking areas? Is the coping cap, is it fastened? Well, does it need to be retaught? Does it need a, you know, cause we’re the coping cat pieces. A lot of times they’re 10 foot long where those pieces lap over four inches on the end. A lot of times that they’re not really sealed well.
I wish every roofer would start using water block between those two pieces of coping cap on the end. That would cause a lot less problems of interior wall leaking. Um, so if you ever have any questions about what roof system would be best for you, please give us a call here at advanced commercial systems in commercial roofing, broken arrow. We would love to assist you. Our number’s (918) 973-1010. Thank you for joining in. Just remember, it is not rocket science. It’s roof science and we are professional roof nerves ready to help you and remember, one more thing, stay dry.
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