High Rise Office Building – Irvine, California

Location: 20 Story Office Building, Irvine, California Size: 220 squares Contractor: Mesa Roofing, Anaheim, California

Duration: 5 Weeks

CHALLENGES

Every aspect of this project was challenging except the choice of Western Colloid’s FARR System.

The first challenge was deciding on the best course of action to get the materials on the roof. Generally for a single to three-story building pumping the coatings on the roof is ideal.

On taller projects Mesa Roofing uses a fire hose to surround the spray hoses. This will insure that with any kind of break in the lines the product will be encased to prevent damage to the building’s exterior. With this project, the limited access, the restrictive times and the weight of the hose over such as span made this method not an option. A crane became the preferred method.

Second challenge was the weight of materials on the roof. The building owner was very concerned about any structural damage from the installation of this roof. As with any roof, the materials need to be distributed throughout the roof to avoid all the weight in one place causing a roof collapse. Mesa Roofing brought in a structural engineer consultant to ascertain the correct areas to stage the materials and stage the tear-off materials being removed.

As you can see from the images Mesa’s crew windrowed the rock so the weight was distributed over the I-beams. Western Colloid supplied the totes half full to lessen the weight of the materials and staging of materials was kept on the perimeter of the building.

Third Challenge was access. There was only one point of access for the crane so all of the material had to be taken by dolly over on 1-3/4” plywood from the loading point. Once again adhering to using a perimeter path mapped out by the structural engineer.

Fourth Challenge was logistics. As mentioned above, there was only one access point for the crane to reach the roof. This project is surrounded by hotels and a parking structure and none of the tenants or guests could be disturbed so the crane could only be used from Friday night to Sunday afternoon. The process of the crane set up, delivery and removal of materials, required pin-point accuracy. A security team was required to close streets and to shut down the parking structure. (Daytime roof work during the week had to follow strict sound control guidelines.)

Once the crane was in use again logistics needed to be exact. Each delivery by the crane took up new material and took down gravel.

It is important to note due to the challenges listed above, that a complete roof removal was not an option so the tear-off consisted of removing the rock (spudding the rock) but leaving the existing membrane in place. Complete tear-off would have added hundreds of thousands to this project and posed a problem with an exposed roof deck making floors below vulnerable.

OUTCOME

This 20-year roof was successfully finished by the end of October 2018 after only 5 weeks of work. Western Colloid developed a special specification for this roof and it’s identical twin building done in 2016. The specification, using Western Colloid #298 emulsion, polyester and #720 ElastaHyde Acrylic, offers a 20-year warranty that can be extended for the life of the roof. The use of Western Colloid products gave the building owner and the contractor the flexibility to install a quality product while saving considerable money.

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