Navigating Mason City Weather on the Commercial Roofs Near Crystal Lake Park
Drive around Crystal Lake Park's loop and you'll see it immediately. Many of the commercial buildings were constructed many years ago; those roofs were built with tar and gravel, not the TPO and EPDM roofing that is so standard for Mason City commercial roofing today.
What contractors near Crystal Lake Park often fail to inform you of is that the old flat roofs don't just all go at once, either; it's the slow process of bad seams leading to a leak as soon as a storm hits a weak spot.
We've seen our share of commercial buildings a block or two from the park, low slope and parapet walls that hold the water rather than shedding it. Ponding water is what you have to look out for in this situation: a roof that holds water for 48 hours after a storm is a roof that's aging twice as fast as it should.
Wind, too, is always an issue. That expanse near Crystal Lake Park provides little wind resistance, and back in the day, the roofing materials weren't fastened like they are today. We've pulled back portions on many of the buildings near 19th Street SW and discovered adhesives that have lost their grip years ago; the roof was just beginning to pull away at the edges.
Commercial buildings around Crystal Lake Park generally have:
- Flat roofs that don't drain after rain events that are severe enough to cause ponding
- Aging EPDM roofing that has shrunk and cracked on the seams
- Roofing of metal with fasteners that have backed out due to wind
- Parapet wall flashing that has pulled away because of freeze-thaw cycles
- Roofing that contains trapped moisture that hasn't been checked for decades
Freeze-thaw cycles are hard on all that: water enters any cracks in those roofs, it freezes, which expands the cracks in the process, and you're left with the damage on the roofs we see every year.
And even metal roofing has its vulnerabilities: standing seam systems are much better at withstanding the elements, but if you aren't checking the seams after a hailstorm, you're asking for trouble. You see that happen; that small dent becomes a leak and, by spring, there is water damage and stains on the ceiling tiles.
For a building that's that old, David likes to say: if it hasn't been inspected in the last two or so years, it's a good bet something is wrong, even if a leak hasn't yet been noticed. The buildings near Crystal Lake Park are charming, but no charm will keep them out of the water.
How Our Team Gets Around to Crystal Lake Park
At 608 12th St NE, it's a short drive to Crystal Lake Park from here. David drives this way all the time to look at a flat roof leak, to look at hail damage after a storm, etc. The trip is short, which is crucial when a homeowner calls about water dripping in.
Basically this is our route:
- Head out from 12th St NE toward the main corridor connecting the north side of town.
- Turn onto the streets that wrap around the park where we have been driving the roofs around the park for years.
- Travel up to the building you are calling about; either the commercial building with a flat roof or the home with a metal roof near the lake.
We are at these buildings in the park well under fifteen minutes most of the time. This is not a claim, just an observation that the park is a short drive from where we do business. We may have to slow down on this drive when there is school traffic or traffic for the market, but those delays only add a few minutes to the drive.
This proximity means we don't need to worry much about where the park is when we are booking jobs; we can come out for a free roof inspection on our way to another job, or come out again in the afternoon if a roof damage inspection requires further work. The park is close, we don't have to book a roof repair three days out to get to the neighborhood.
Also, the buildings around the park have specific characteristics that we have learned over time; the flat roofs around Crystal Lake Park sometimes pool water in spots, which may not be visible unless a homeowner has a water stain on the inside of his home. We know exactly what equipment and methods are appropriate for a call to investigate roof leaks in the neighborhood, or a commercial roof replacement estimate in the neighborhood. We aren't flying out into the park blindfolded.
We also know from years of driving around the neighborhood that the weather on a flat roof near the lake can vary, and wind is one factor that varies. It might be clear and calm out of town at noon, but turn windy as we cross the park, and the wind that hits the roof from the lake is different. We've seen the damage from wind on Crystal Lake Park roofs that a roof in town wouldn't experience from the same storm. When we are out on a wind damage roof repair call in this area, we already know the conditions of a flat roof in that area.
The point is, getting here is not a problem. We're close, we know the roads, we know the roof. Whether it's a same day roof repair call or a scheduled roof coating job, it's not a big deal to get a crew from our shop to a home or business near the park. What is a problem is what we see after we're up on the roof.
What's Different About Buildings In Crystal Lake Park
Walking around the park near the shore is interesting, especially when you look up, instead of out. Nearly 50 percent of the roofs we see near here are being subjected to loads for which they were not designed. The older lake-adjacent buildings around here were constructed with a different, lighter, less snowy, less ice-y, less storm-against-storm climate in mind. We've done flat roof and metal roof work on buildings within a few blocks of the park, some of which date back many decades. Crystal Lake adds moisture to the local air. This moisture hangs around longer on the lakeshore than it does a mile inland, accelerating the rate of deck deterioration. Some of the most common roof problems we find on work near the park are:
- flat-roof buildings with water pool issues due to lake humidity and initial design drainage deficiencies;
- older flat roof metal roofing that was patched over instead of resealed throughout the decades;
- small commercial buildings that converted older residential buildings to commercial, where the rooflines don't lend themselves to being flat roofs;
- buildings that have been retrofitted with flat roof waterproofing, some dating back to the early part of the last century;
- terraces and balconies on mixed-use residential commercial buildings near the park with poor drainage and water pool issues.
Of course, we don't do shingle roof work. Never did. But flat roofs and metal roofs near Crystal Lake Park? That's a large portion of what's out there, and also a lot of what we do. A large portion of the property owners near the park assume roof leaks are all created equal and there is really no difference. It's a roof leak, right? No, it isn't. A flat roof over a building fifty yards from the lake behaves differently than it does for one three miles inland in a dry subdivision. The humidity from the lake keeps the flat roof membrane damp longer following a rainstorm. A roof's ability to dry out (or lack thereof) causes early failure.
We've seen what happens when this fact gets ignored. If a flat roof has a small pool problem and there is a rooftop unit, it's not uncommon to see a ponding soft deck a year or two later. By the time the owner calls us, water has already reached the flat roof insulation and it is no longer just a leak repair.
Most contractors won't tell you this, but the buildings that are the closest to the water need more frequent roof maintenance, not less. This just happens to be how the roof repair situation plays out in Crystal Lake Park. If your building is just a couple of blocks from Crystal Lake Park, that building's roof is exposed to much more moisture than the building of the same age that's located further away, like elsewhere in Mason City.
So, when we are out working on a roof near the park, we're not just checking for water leaks and pooling; we're also assessing the roof drainage slope, the flat roof metal seam, the flat roof waterproofing against the lake air. Most of the work that we do in Crystal Lake Park is simply preventing flat roof roof moisture issues from turning into flat roof replacement issues.