If a major storm is headed your way, use the extra time to make a contingency plan for your roof delineating necessary responsibilities before, during, and after the storm. When bad weather hits, you’ll be glad you did.

WELL BEFORE

Set up a meeting with your chief of maintenance or general contractor and other trades to address several issues. Identify the critical parts of the building, such as boiler rooms, computer rooms, and electrical installations. Assign a priority to get to those areas and, when needed, restore or protect them first. Be sure to account for these areas as well so you’re not scrambling during the storm:

• Ensure access to snow blowers, fuel for power tools and shovel storage.
• Confirm that roof drains and scuppers have been tested and properly hooked up to the storm sewers. Roof drains should be set into a sump (depressed area with thinner insulation) so that heat from the building will melt ice and snow at the drain first. Install tell-tails to help locate rooftop drains, vents and HVAC units so that snow blowers do not cause damage during the snow removal process.
• Discuss how to access snow blowers, shovels, sandbags and other safety equipment where needed. Safety considerations like gloves, boots, helmets, and eye protection should be stored in an easily accessible area where they can be quickly employed as needed. Frostbite is no laughing matter.
• Pails of asphalt mastic should be available, along with work gloves and trowels. These are generally available at big box centers but may be sold out during major events, especially those that can cause wind damage. (Pruning large tree branches will help avoid the associated window breakage.)
• Protect emergency power. Before the storm hits, test your backup power sources and make sure key personnel are trained to operate them.
• Don’t forget communication. Landlines and cell phones may be unreliable during a major event. Employees will be concerned with the safety of their families, so back-up phone numbers should be available as needed.

Whether you’re facing wind, winter, or whatever the elements may bring, have a plan in place and make sure your building’s roof is prepared for extreme weather. Human optimism makes us believe the worst won’t come, and then it takes us by storm.

“We’re seeing record temperatures, several inches of rain overnight, damaging winds, regional power failures, and building collapse from accumulated snow or plugged drains,” says Richard L. Fricklas, former technical director emeritus of the Roofing Industry Educational Institute. “It’s one thing to read about these things in the local newspaper – quite another when they affect your building and its occupants.”

Most buildings in the U.S. are under two stories and their roofs often represent the largest portion of their building envelopes. More heat energy is lost through roofs than walls and windows. If all U.S. buildings met the 2012 level of code-mandated insulation, 700 trillion BTUs of energy would be saved.

Another aspect of environmental impact involves renewable energy production. If 25% of U.S. rooftops incorporated power from solar, the energy produced would be 25 times greater than the 21 billion kilowatt hours of hydroelectric power produced by the Columbia River’s Grand Coulee Dam. Keep in mind, however, that we can save more energy with insulation than we can generate from solar power. The building professional’s priority should be efficiency before renewable production.

Service life also affects environmental impact. A roof that lasts 30 years will consume fewer materials and resources than one that lasts 15 years.

To manage your roof’s green performance, take control of these six factors.

1) Roof Insulation
The minimum insulation values required by building codes have been rising steadily in recent years. Code values are based on eight climate zones in the U.S., with zone 1 (which includes Miami) being the hottest and zone 8 (parts of Alaska) the coldest. The minimum thermal resistance values specified by the International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) for insulation range from R-20 for zone 1 to R-35 for zone 8.

The recognition of insulation’s importance has been increasing due to its energy-efficiency impact on heating and cooling loads, especially at a time when plug loads are being driven upward by computers and other electronic devices. However, code-mandated insulation values are only the legal minimums – thermal performance ultimately depends on other factors as well.

2) Thermal Performance
Best practice calls for at least two layers of insulation. The bottom layer can be fastened or adhered, but ideally the top layers should only be adhered in order to avoid fasteners. Metal fasteners can transfer a lot of heat energy, creating thermal bridges from the building’s interior to the outside. Most fasteners have a 2- to 3-inch metal plate to withstand wind loads. Covering the fasteners with another layer of insulation reduces a building’s thermal losses.