CASE STUDY 3
Time and Labor Saved for Church Re-roofing Project

At the Summerville Baptist Church in Summerville, South Carolina, ponding water on the gym’s existing modified bitumen roof and the built-up roof on several classrooms had created leak problems. With the buildings in constant use, officials at the church worried an accident would occur where there was a leak, endangering the approximately 175 children that attended the church’s daycare center.

Dodging buckets or closing down the facility in order to make repairs on the roof were not options. At risk from water damage were office and school equipment such and the gym’s brand-new parquet floor.

Roofing Systems Considered

Several types of roofing systems were reviewed during the initial phases of the re-roofing project.

“We looked at built-ups again, synthetic rubber, spray-on coatings as well as thermoplastic single-plies,” recalls church maintenance director John Nettles. Officials at Summerville weighed their options and the benefits of each type of system before determining that a prefabricated membrane roofing system would be the best choice.

John Congdon, owner of Congdon Roofing, Inc. in Charleston, South Carolina, agreed: “We knew that the mechanically attached . . . single-ply roofing system would be a perfect fit for the Summerville Baptist Church facilities,” Congdon says. “Both of these problem roofs had parapet walls to deal with. With the (membrane) roofing system, you can encapsulate the parapet walls to resolve leaking problems that normally occur in walls made of mortar.”

On-Site Labor and Time Saved

Another benefit of the (membrane) roofing system is prefabrication. With 80 percent to 85 percent of the seams being factory welded at one of the membrane manufacturer’s facilities, the Congdon Roofing crew had less rooftop field seaming to complete, thus making the roof easier and quicker to install with fewer hours of labor.

Congdon noted that the system is clean and uses no hazardous materials, which was important to church officials who did not want any messy tar kettles on the roofs or near the buildings that were occupied during the installation.

Plus, because the warranty on the prefabricated membrane roofing system does not exclude ponding water or consequential damages, church officials did not have to worry about the minor ponds associated with low-sloped roofs that had caused the previous roof to fail.

The church officials liked the new membrane roofing system so much that they recommended it to another nearby church that needed a new roof for its nursery building.