If you have a flat or low sloped roof on your house that is leaking and you need to fix this area, I would sugguest using epdm rubber roofing. If you do this yourself you can save a lot of money. In most instances you would take off the old roofing down to the wood deck and glue epdm roofing to the deck. It is always better to fully adhear the rubber to the deck. This will give you a good long term roof. Almost all epdm rubber roofing failures are related to the installation and I have found out from over twenty years of experance that a fully-adheared roof gives you less problems. Before you order your rubber roofing measure the roof and if possible buy it in one piece. This way you don't have to make any seams. But if you have to order your roof in pieces it will be easier to make your seams with a butly seam tape. This tape was developed to work with epdm roofing. You can make your seams with glue but this is more difficult and takes more experance.

We are now in the middle of winter in most of the country. Of course if you are in an area where the temperatures are freezing, your roof is probably not leaking. But you probably know if it has been leaking in the past. Now is a good time to make plans to repair your roof or rv while most business are not busy. The economy seems to be picking up and most suppliers of roofing products are raising their prices. This usually happens around April. So you might want to measure your roof and determine which products you need and order them now. The only thing you need to note is that be sure the temperatures are above freezing for the shipping of these products to you. You can work with your supplier to determine if the conditions are right to ship to you. Be sure to store your adhesive in a place that it will not freeze untill you need it. Be sure to check with your supplier before you install, to make sure what temperatures the product will work in.

There seems to be a lot of confusing with all of the coatings that are advertised for covering rv roofs. Some of these coatings are not compatable with EPDM roofs which have been installed for over 15 years on rvs. Always be sure that your coating is compatable with your roof. You could make your roof repair worse with the wrong materials. You need to be sure that anytime you apply coatings you spend extra time and effort cleaning you existing roof. After you have cleaned your existing roof and think it is clean it wouldn't be a bad idea to do it again. Then carefully examine your existing roof for major defects. Remember even if you do a good job coating your EPDM roof, your coating is only as good as the surface you coated. The biggest problem I have with any coatings is the application process. Most instructions will tell that a gallon is to cover a certain square footage. They tell you it should be a certain thickness on the roof to work properly. I can tell you from experience it is very difficult to spread a coating on a roof with a paint roller and keep the same thickness all over the roof. You will be heavy in some areas and thin in others. The insturctions on the can will tell you to measure a certain square footage and to apply a certain amount of coating in this area to see if you are using enough or too much. If you do coat an area to thin this will fail in time. The only plus side I see to using coatings is that you don't have to remover your air-conditionar or vents.

folks I am sorry that I have ingnored this blog since july of 2010. I hope to spend more time and provide more information in 2011. I did have a question posted in 2010 about bicycle patch kits and why would'nt they work for EPDM roofing. A bicycle tire tube is mostly made of butyl rubber which is easier to stick a patch to than EPDM. The thickness of the intertube is usually under .020mil. The thickness of the EPDM roofing is usually .045 mil. So a patch kit designed for EPDM would be thicker and work better. I am not saying that bicycle patch would not work for small holes but it would not be recommended by the manufacture. Remember however you patch your rubber roof to be sure to clean it thourghly. This is the single most important thing you can do to make any patch stick.

I have spent a lot of time discussing RV roofs. The reason for this is all of the misinformation about repair them. I would like to warn all RV owners that when you repair a EPDM RV roof that you use a product that is compatable and meets warranty requirements. Most of the repair products on the market are not what the manufacture sugguest and could void the roofing warranty. So be sure to check and make sure. It could save you a lot of money in the future.

I have recently been looking on the inter net for information about patch kits that are used for the repair of rubber and metal roofs. I have looked at over ten different kits from different suppliers and none of them have any primer tape activator in them. I can assure you that if you don't use a primer that your repair will only be tempery. I use to work in a research and development lab working with epdm and other single ply rubbers. I have conducted many test on using tape with primer and without primer. In every case the non primed tape failed over time. If you don't believe me go out and pull on the edge of a repair done without primer you will see that it peels up easily. The reason that most suppliers don't use primer is because primer is flammable and can't be shipped normal channels. So they simply say clean thoroughly and apply patch. There are only two companies that have solved this problem and have primer in their patch kits. One is Firestone Building Products that has a pond patch kit with primer, tape, roller, gloves and scrubber pad. The other is Rooftop which is a trade marked division of flatroofsolutions.com who has a multi surface patch kit with white rubber tape, primer , roller, gloves and scrubber pad.

RV ROOF INSTALLATION.

A friend of mine purchased a used RV unit in an auction. This rv's roof was leaking and had caused a lot of damage inside. It also appeared that the decking was water damaged. He decided that he would have to take off the old roof and put a new one on. So he contacted an rv dealer to see what it would cost to put a new roof on his rv. The rv is 9' x35' and does not have any slide outs. The dealer quoted $3,500 to take off the old and install a new one. Since I had some experance with rubber roofing my friend asked me if I would help install a new roof on his rv unit. I told him I had never done this before and was a little apprensive about tackling this project. He talked me into doing it and he purchased a complete rv installation kit for under $ 500 from flatroofsolutions.com. So the two of us started one morning and removed the old roof using the instructional dvd as a guide. It only took a half day to remove the air-conditionar unit and vents and remove the old roof. We then had to replace some of the rotten deck with new. This process was much easier than I thought it would be. We then installed the new rubber membrane on the roof that same day. The second day we finished the roof by attaching the air-unit and vents back onto the rv. It actually took only a day and half for the two of us to complete this project. The whole process was much easier than anticipated. As you can see , my friend saved about $3,000. This price could vary according to your local rv dealer. But if you are some what handy and can follow instructions you should be able to do this installation yourself. As you can see your could save thousands of dollars.