Kincardine Council received an update on the roofing condition of municipally-owned buildings.
This week, Garland Canada gave a presentation to council outlining which buildings needed new roofs, and which ones needed to be repaired.
Andrew Michaud is an asset manager with Garland and explained what the team was looking for and how they assess what needs to be replaced, and what simply needs to be repaired.
They looked at the Davidson Centre, the Kincardine Centre for the Arts, and Public Works buildings, including the Park Street Lift Station and the Effluent Station.
Michaud explained that the company does visual inspections and thermal scans of roofs, and typically looks for indications of wet roofing insulation.
“What does wet insulation mean? Well, the first big [issue] would be [the risk of] mould growing in a public environment. The second thing is you have heat loss. The second is that when any type of insulation in flat roofing gets wet, you lose the [ability to retain heat]. It’s like heating in the winter time, and leaving multiple doors open,” he explained to members of council on Wednesday.
He also explained why using technology was more advantageous than cutting into the roof of a building to assess potential damage.
Michaud says that by using thermal scanning, they can assess not only how much damage is under the roofing material but also lets them know if they only need to do repair work and save the roof from further damage, or to be greener in their repairs — to only replace what needs to be done instead of scrapping materials that are still functioning correctly.
“If there are multiple areas of wet insulation, we pick the most important areas and then work backward. And that’s what this report has done [for multiple facilities].”
Also presenting on behalf of Garland Canada was Michael Delaroche, who explained to the council that once the roofs in most urgent need of replacing were dealt with, and appropriate repairs were completed on the roofs with additional life span, then from that point onward would be simple maintenance by the municipality to have the buildings inspected a couple of times a year.
