roof leak testing

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Roof Leaks Testing
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• Roof Services often investigates leaking roofs.
  While the visible and physical examinations which
  makes up the first line of leak investigation are
  often successful, sometimes additional testing is
  needed.

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Additional testing

•  often consists of water being introduced to the
  roof in order to recreate the leak.
• The two methods of introducing water to the roof
  are
• flood testing
• water testing.

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flood testing

• Flood testing refers to blocking the roof drains
  or other means of drainage and filling the roof
  with multiple inches of standing water. The
  standing water is then typically left in place
  for 24 or 48 hours, or until a leak occurs. While
  we will perform flood tests when required, we
  find that they are not usually the most effective
  means of testing a roof. It is not practical to
  flood a roof with inches of water as when the
  flood test does find the leak, there are now
  thousands of gallons of water on the roof which
  can enter into the building through the leak and
  cause substantial interior damage. As a result
  flood tests are usually performed when the roof
  is assumed to be watertight and this test is used
  to confirm that the roof is in fact watertight.

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water testing

• Instead of flood tests, Roof Services usually
  performs water tests. Water tests consist of
  spraying individual building components in order
  to determine their watertight integrity. Because
  standing water is not required, water tests are
  quicker than flood tests. Because individual
  components are tested regardless of their height
  relative to the roof water tests are more
  effective. Because catastrophic damage is not
  possible, water tests are usually preferred. Most
  preferred water leak test for roofing.

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Mistakes during water test

• When water tests are performed there are three
  common mistakes made by the contractor at the
  time of water leak test for roofing
• The first is using too much water pressure.
  Remember the intention of the test is to simulate
  nature and using a nozzle will not do that.
• The second mistake is not providing enough time
  to properly perform the test. It is not uncommon
  for the infiltration of water inside your
  building to take hours versus minutes from the
  time that the rain begins therefore you need to
  provide enough time to recreate the leak

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• Finally, it is important that you properly
  sequence the water test and in the process
  isolate each component. This is necessary because
  you need to know what caused the leak in order to
  fix the problem area
• Water tests are sometimes performed using a high
  pressure nozzle which blasts the roof or other
  building components with dramatically more
  pressure and in different directions then could
  ever occur in nature. While these high pressure
  tests will often demonstrate deficiencies in the
  building construction, these are usually not
  deficiencies which cause leaks during normal
  weather conditions. Therefore, they can create a
  false positive and the deficiency which caused
  the leak during normal weather remains
  undiagnosed.