Why You Should Be Proactive About Roof Maintenance

By Jennifer Long for GAF. 

Periodic inspections and scheduled repairs will best preserve your roof.  

Frequent readers of roofing blogs and other publications may recognize a compelling and frequently quoted argument for preventive maintenance made in Buildings.com: building owners and facility managers who inspect and repaired their roofs routinely were able to identify potential problems before they happened. As a result, they spent an average of only 14¢ per square foot annually for maintenance. On the other hand, owners and managers who reacted to problems spent an average of 25¢ per square foot annually. On top of that, proactively maintained roofs lasted an average of eight years longer than reactively maintained roofs. 

The reporting is nearly ten years old, so instead of relying solely on potentially rusty data, let’s look at the conditions underlying those results and see if it still makes more sense to implement a proactive maintenance program than gamble with a reactive one. 

Spoiler alert: It does. 

First, let’s define our terms. 

By reactive maintenance, we mean unscheduled work performed upon discovery of critical defects that may present an immediate threat of water intrusion into the building interior. Proactive maintenance involves managing the roof as you would manage an asset like a computer network or a machine shop — with periodic inspections and scheduled repairs. 

The goal of a proactive maintenance program is to anticipate problems that might prevent the roofing system from doing its job. Even the slightest delay in roof repairs can expose the building to costly slip and fall incidents and mold and mildew problems. Once a roof has fallen into disrepair, you’ll become exposed to expenses caused by excessive labor costs, destroyed inventory, higher energy costs, higher insurance premiums and damaged interiors. In addition, emergency repairs can cost anywhere from three to nine times as much as scheduled preventive repairs. 

Proactively protect the warranty 

Standard “No Dollar Limit” warranties require maintenance. The EverGuard® Diamond Pledge™ NDL Roof Guarantee, for instance, states, “You must perform regular inspections and maintenance and keep records of this work.” GAF Certified Maintenance Professionals (CMPs) can offer the GAF WellRoof® Guarantee Extension, which encourages regular maintenance and extends the length of eligible GAF Diamond Pledge™ guarantees by up to 25% — with no additional guarantee fee. 

Implementing a proactive maintenance program as a building owner is as logical as scheduling an engine oil change — the cost of not doing it is simply too high to ignore. 

Have a question? AskARoofer. 

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Original article source: GAF