Prolonging the Life of your Roofing System

Canadian Property Management | August 2024
Stephen Epp, BSc, RRO, P.Eng. | Project Engineer

Sometimes it's all about the icing on the cake

Roofing systems make up the top covering of a building, providing shelter and protection against rain, snow, sunlight, fluctuating temperatures and other adverse conditions. In other words, the roof is an integral part of the building envelope and shouldn’t be neglected.

Given that most roofs aren’t built to endure decades upon decades of exposure to the elements, there comes a time in every building’s lifespan when the roof—or components of the roof—will need to be replaced. As Stephen Epp, Project Engineer with RJC Engineers, tells his clients, imagining your roofing system as a multi-layered cake can be a helpful way to understand its components.

“Cake is a universally understood dessert that can have just as many different options as a conventionally insulated commercial roof system, and the layers correlate nicely,” he says. “Think of the icing on top of the cake as the waterproofing membrane, and the top crust of the baked cake as the overlay sheathing to support that membrane layer. On the inside, the moist layers of cake are your insulation layers.”

Continuing further down, Epp compares the bottom crust of the cake to the air vapour barrier and the plate the cake sits on to the structural deck. Not only does it create a nice, relatable image of an otherwise complicated system, seeing the roof like a multi-layered cake also helps illustrate the point that building owners don’t always need to replace the entire system when undergoing a replacement project.

“With the right conditions, it is possible to replace just the icing and leave the rest of the delicious cake all the way down to the plate,” he says. “This prolongs the life of the components that are still functioning optimally, potentially saving your team considerable time and money.”

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