What’s Your Ideal House?
When people imagine a house, many picture a building with a pitched or A-shaped roof. However, this is far from the only option available for your home or business. One style to consider is a flat roof, which is a horizontal roof that is usually tilted at a very low angle.
Reasons to Choose a Flat Roof
People choose flat roofs for a variety of reasons. Some simply like the way they give a home a more modern look. Others appreciate advantages such as:
- Low cost: Flat roofs are generally easier to design and construct than angled roofs. Depending on the materials you use, they can cost significantly less money to build.
- Accessibility: It is much easier to access a flat roof for maintenance or repairs. Some people with flat roofs even use them for gardens or other projects.
However, it is important to note that there are also disadvantages to living in a building with a flat roof. For example, these roofs require careful maintenance, or they can be damaged by weather and gradual wear and tear. They can also be prone to water pooling and flooding.
Before choosing a roof design for your home, it is important to be fully informed about your options. Our roofing specialists can help you review your choices when designing a home or constructing a new roof.
Flat Roofing System Options
Foam Roofing
Foam roofing is the most energy-efficient roofing material available, over 500% more efficient than conventional roofs. It’s the first intelligent roofing technology for flat and low-sloped roofs, combining insulation and roofing into one material. That means no roofing seams or multiple layers – eliminating the expanding and contracting and separating that allows water and microbes to seep in and damage your roof.
Each Mikku and Sons foam roof is custom installed. The foam is sprayed on as a liquid mixture, and within a few seconds will expand to up to 30 times its original volume. It will become a watertight, seamless solid that custom forms to the roofing substrate. Take a look at the advantages of a Mikku and Son’s foam roof:
- Tough, seamless construction
- Can be sprayed onto almost any surface including irregularly shaped roofs and uneven surfaces
- Tenacious adhesion – demonstrated in the most recent Florida hurricanes
- Moisture resistant – even when the membrane coating is damaged
- Inch-per-inch, the highest energy efficient roofing material available
- Extremely strong – yet ultra lightweight
- Proven longevity classifies it as a sustainable low-slope roofing system
- In most cases requires only periodic recoating for decades of service
Built-up Roof Membrane (BUR)
- Assembled in place using multiple plies of asphalt- impregnated felt bedded in bitumen.
- Asphalt or coal-tar is applied hot in order to merge with the saturant bitumens in the felt and form a single-piece membrane.
- The felt is laminated in overlapping layers to form a membrane that is two to four plies thick.
- The membrane is protected from sunlight and physical wear by applying a layer of aggregate (such as crushed stone or other mineral granules) embedded in the surface ply.
Elastomeric/Plastomeric Roof Membrane
- Sheet materials applied to the roof in a single layer.
- They require less on-site labor than built-up roofing and are usually more elastic and, therefore, less prone to cracking and tearing.
- They may be affixed to the roof with adhesives, by the weight of a gravel ballast, by fasteners concealed in the seams between sheets, or with mechanical fasteners that do not penetrate the membrane.
- Types of Elastomeric/Plastomeric Roof Membranes include the following:
