Question: How often should I have my roof professionally inspected and what are technicians generally looking for?
Answer: Roof inspections should be performed on a commercial building twice a year, according to the National Roofing Contractors Association. Typically, after the winter and after the summer because those are generally the two harshest climates.
In the winter, the roof starts to cool meaning it starts to contract, which means the roof will shrivel up and pull. In the summer when it gets warm, it loosens up. For example, a day where the weather is sunny, the roofs are heating up and depending on the color of your roof, it could go from 30 or 40 degrees in the morning to 70 or 80 degrees in the afternoon. As the sun goes down, it’s going to snap back to 30 to 40 degrees so you start to get a lot of give and take and that’s when you start getting a lot of your splits.
Technicians are looking at all of the flashing points, meaning anything that penetrates the roof. The penetrations are typically the weakest points of the roof. Anything that breaks the field of the roof or the plane of the roof is considered a penetration. In the wintertime when the roof starts to contract, that can start pulling those penetration points and then in the summertime when it starts to loosen up, then the penetration points obviously begin to relax and weaken.
