Cops came to both jobsites today

There are days you just can't believe the turn of events.

Site 1: 18sq rip & re-roof. 6 guys plus my Dad. On an average street in our hometown. We are parked on our side of the road as legal as could be.

Neighbor across the street comes out hollering like a banshee, 'move that truck, I'm going to be in and out all day with my boat' My Dad says I don't think so, you can get out of there. Guy continues cursing and screaming. Dad says screw you call the cops.

I'm on the 2nd job, a 100sq barrel TPO roof with 3 other guys. The dispatcher calls me to say there is a little complaint about us blocking a drive, and apparently we said we clearly told him to get screwed. OK...

I call my Dad and he agree's. I tell dispatch not to worry about it from our end, the guy was just being a turd.

2 minutes later I get a call from my Uncle saying "Your Dad just smacked the hell out of this dude". Ahh crap, on my way. Turns out the guy came out screaming, lunged at my Dad with a little punch and my Dad put him down. Cops arrested the neighbor.

THEN at the end of the day on the barrel roof, our newest grunt walks down to the edge of the roof to see some guy in our truck. "Don't take my phone bro" Guy goes running. My guy flies down the ladder after him. They have a non-physical confrontation five blocks away and he got the phone back. Bad guy got arrested.

And to think, I thought we were just going to be dodging rain drops all day.

Mike,

Doing a little digging, I see that the founder of SWP is no longer listed in their contacts, (it says he was freed up to focus on business development) but is listed as the contact for ROOFLOGIC.

I can't tell for sure if RoofLogic is a contracting firm, or a distribution firm, but they sure hijacked a lot of pictures, etc, from the Fibertite website.

I guess if immitation is the finest form of flattery, I should be happy, there are part of Fibertite's, SWP's and RoofLogic's website that sure read nearly identical to portions of my self-written website. LOL

PS:

No, we do a wide range of membranes by a large ion of manufacturers, but Fibertite is what we sell.

Fibertite Sarnafil Firestone Carlisle Versico Manville Derbigum Soprema

We do not install TPO without it being specified by a design professional on whom the liability will rest, or without a system's manufacturer's warranty, or a written acknowledgement by the owner that they understand what our experience has been with TPO and understand that we do not recommend the product.

I will stick my neck out (and my son's I reckon) and offer a company issued, 20 year, labor and material warranty on a 36 mil Fibertite roof, but I won't offer diddly on a 60 mil TPO.

Mike,

Sarnafil has performed very well for us for 24 years, though 24 year old Sarna is almost impossible to weld to.

Carlisle's PVC, as stated previously, has elvaloy and it would be a top consideration, as I have no reason to believe it will not perform adequately.

Manville is private labelling the C3 membrane made by Cooley. Some other companies also market this membrane.

The C3 membrane, under various names has performed well for us as well.

The biggest difference is that these other products are true PVC membranes with elvaloy and pthalate blend as a plasticizer, and there is no way to make pthalate long-term stable. It will eventually flash out.

Sarnafil does not use elvaloy, but do use an acrylic coating on top, and have a skin of higher quality compounding over the lower quality matrix underneath. At least that is my non-technical, non-insider take of the membrane based on my experience with it.

The other two products listed have 15+% elvaloy, which will add long term stability and some degree of flexibility after the pthalate is gone.

Fibertite, and why I like it so much, is not technically a PVC. It is 51% Elvaloy, pvc is the primary carrier/stiffener, along with the other fillers and chemicals necessary for UV, mold, algea,fire, etc.... Fibertite has it's own ASTM# and while it's most often specified along side other PVC's, it is a different animal altogether.

I have my doubts that you have the right people.

One guy was a construction distributor from Aussieland, who could talk well about a wide range of construction products and techniques.

The other was the founder of SWP, and according to their website has 70 employees, and we've talked about doing a crew-swap some year, since our seasons are opposite each other.

clvr,

The Carlisle pvc should be a decent product. It has some pthalate, butt also has a solid plasitizer called Elvaloy... that's the good stuff. A little is better than none. If the guys around you are not installing the pvc, you might be surprised. Carlisle built a pvc line and they want to move product. It's possible you could get a PVC-only license.

Otherwise, a 60 mil, adhered epdm is a darn good roof. Much better than tpo.

And no, we would remove the durolast before the re-cover. Even if we leave the existing insulation. It's never good to put a vapor barrier in the middle of your insulation column.

Your going over DL w/ a slipsheet or ISO? It seems like I never get the easier jobs like this. I think I'm pricing them too high, not adjusting for how quickly it might go. Maybe I'm priced right though, and not selling correctly.

I actually just had a sales meeting where I claimed that this product would have a 20yr manuf. warranty, but in the next sentence said that I felt 20 years is "meh." It went over well. I've never touched 45mil.

Fibertite would be great but I don't think they'd certify, I still consider myself new to membrane roofing and don't do a lot of it yet. Two Carlisle guys live somewhat near me and run TPO instead of their PVC(including the lower roof next to this barrel.) I doubt Carlisle would let me in, the two contractors they have are very good.

Firestone & Carlisle are the only two that's commonly distributed around here. If I installed more, which I hope to, I'd order quantities of something better.

clvr83 Said:

Durolast is known for excessive spider web cracks around 20 years, from what Ive heard.

Should have been one over every lap screw. The heat-sink created by the metal screw accellerates the "flash out" of the pthalate plasticizer.

Hail is the likely culprit if they were randomly spaced all over the roof.

Either way, yeah, this is typical for durolast 15 years & older. Hopefully going to be covering 2000 squares of it later this year.

It's 22 years old. I bid the roof 22 years ago. A former employee got the job. "This is just as good as Fibertite..." as the sales pitch went. They had a smaller, early 1980's Fibertite roof right next to this area.

That Fibertite is STILL THERE and not part of the re-roof plan.

:)

And I have been telling you guys for close to 15 years, you're going to see similar results from all the TPO you're putting down. Been watching it fail for over 20 years, after putting the first TPO on in 1988. Still waiting for our first one to last 15 years, although I think most of the 60 mils going down to day will do 20 years. Which I guess is OK if you're one who thinks 20 years is acceptable.

I was worried about welding it at first too. I was worried about doing a SA on the barrel. I decided to do a SA job in December to prepare for the barrel. Yes December. In December we were having 50F degree days, temps at night around freezing.

Genflex/Firestone's SA TPO claims to stick down to 20F degree's. I have no reason not to believe them after working with it. If it flops where you don't want it, you'll be peeling up ISO facer with it most of the time.

The best part of this is that when your pulling the release paper it creates a HUGE amount of static electricity. Step on a plate while pulling it, or even a plate underneath existing membrane, POW! Continually. Pulling a 32'x5' sheet at once, avoid the plates or get popped about five times.

Durolast is known for excessive spider web cracks around 20 years, from what I've heard.

This was a 20 year old DL roof over asphalt. I went to see if I could temporarily patch their leak before the bidding phase and found circular cracks all over the place. You could push on them and watch the water flow. They wanted a coating, but it was easy to talk them out of that with a video of the water coming out.

Vaa: My Dad doesn't take any guff, haha. Turns out the opposing party was also a distant Clover(edit: it turn's out he wasn't actually, somebody was mistaken.) And a neighborhood pest, we got a lot of good stories from neighbors.

The barrel roof was a fun one. Thank goodness for Peel & Stick TPO. They are going to issue a 20 year warranty for it. We ran the TPO up and over the curve, many times the entire 64' run of the barrel. The trick part was brooming and using a 100lb roller over every square inch.

Welding wasn't too bad. This is just a quarter barrel(Approx.) so you can actually walk down to the bottom easily on the old Durolast, but not as easy after the TPO. We harnessed off and took the robot with us, then went up and over the barrel. Luckily, the way we ran the sheets, the robot started the 2 story side and ended at the side with another roof 2' below it.

HAHA. You been drinkin? :laugh: