The roof over your head

Your roof is arguably your home’s most important feature. Without a roof, you wouldn’t have a home at all, just a yard with walls and a floor. Your home’s roof keeps the rain and snow out. In the winter it keeps the heat in and in the summer it provides shade. It also protects your walls, floor, foundation, and whatever valuables you keep inside. Your home’s roof is so important, that people often refer to their home simply as “the roof over their head.”

The roof over your head protects your most valuable assets from the elements, so it only makes sense to protect your roof. Depending on the type of roof system you have, it could last forty years with proper care. Without proper care, it could fail in as little as fifteen. Leaves, pine needles, moss and other organic accumulations on your roof can trap moisture allowing mould and fungus to grow, leading to rot and leaks. Excessive debris can also divert water, causing it to run where it’s not supposed to, such as under flashing and shingles. A clean roof is less likely to develop leaks which means it will last longer.

Roof debris harms more than just your roof.

Next to your home’s roof its next most important feature is its foundation. Roof debris can cause serious issues here as well. Most residential buildings are equipped with gutter systems designed to collect rainwater from the roof and direct it away from the building’s foundation through the perimeter drain system. If you fail to remove roof debris promptly the rain will inevitably wash this material into your gutter system. From here, it can quickly find its way into downspouts and clog them, causing your gutters to overflow, preventing them from doing their job.

Clogged gutters lead to rainwater overflowing and splashing on the walls of your building, potentially causing the very structure that supports the roof over your head to rot. Worse yet, this water ends up on the ground, challenging your building’s perimeter drainage. If the gutters aren’t cleaned right away, this debris will begin to decompose and turn into sludge. This sludge will eventually work its way into the downspouts and then into the building’s drain tile, clogging it. Once your perimeter drains are clogged, water can begin to attack your building’s footings. This will destroy the very foundation on which your home is built.

Looks aren’t everything but they are important.

Of course, there are also obvious aesthetic reasons to clean your roof. A dirty roof is unattractive and reduces your building’s curb appeal, making your home look older and more run down. Ultimately, nobody wants a dirty roof, so why not clean it?

Why not just clean your roof?

Many people are reluctant to clean their roofs for a couple of good reasons. First, roofs are often difficult to access. They are high up, often steeply slopped and sometimes slippery. Roofs frequently require special equipment to safely access and work on, putting them out of reach of many homeowners and maintenance personnel. Secondly, since the roof system is so important, owners are afraid to damage it, especially if it is not already leaking. One of the primary concerns when cleaning a roof is damage to the roof. When done improperly, roof cleaning can cause more issues than it solves. The idea is, if it’s not broken, don’t fix it. Of course, most people wouldn’t apply this same logic to other important maintenance tasks like changing the oil in their car.

The key is to do maintenance tasks properly. Fortunately, Servus Group can help with this. We specialize in solving difficult access problems for a variety of exterior maintenance services, including roof cleaning. Using a combination of ladders, elevating work platforms, fall protection and industrial rope access techniques, we can reach almost any part of any building’s roof safely and efficiently. We have decades of experience cleaning different debris off of different types of roofs. We know what techniques are safe to use and under what circumstances. From hand-picking debris and gentle blowing with a leaf blower to soft-wash solution, we can determine to safest and most effective methods to clean your building’s most important feature.

Roof Cleaning – Selecting A Contractor – Top Items – #Soft Washing

Roof Cleaning, when done correctly, provides immediate benefits to residential buildings, including remarkably improving the building’s appearance and making the roof last longer.

You should carefully consider what cleaning methods you use when cleaning your roof because failure to clean it properly will result in damage.

Here are the Top Items to consider when selecting a roof cleaning contractor:

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Soft Washing Chemistry

Soft washing is a cleaning method that uses a liquid cleaning solution to remove dirt, algae and other organic material from a building’s facade. The liquid cleaning solution is sprayed on the building using low-pressure pumps and then left to react. After several minutes the solution breaks up any contaminants on the building and is later washed off using water and mechanical agitation (aka brushes). The entire process uses low-pressure and thus avoids many of the problems associated with pressure washing.

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Breaking the 300′ Barrier

Cleaning tall high-rise buildings has always been challenging, but once a building exceeds 300’ (approximately 30 stories) the situation becomes even more difficult, especially where no engineered swing stage has been permanently installed on the building. At these heights, the requirements for traditional access methods, such as bosun’s chair and swing stage, require specific engineering, as set out in WorkSafeBC regulations. Under these circumstances, an industrial rope access system might be more appropriate.READ MORE