Lubbock CountyWhen Natalie Harvill started as the director of operations for Lubbock County, Texas, one of her first orders of business was to address the roof situation.
“We had probably the majority of our roofs that needed to be replaced,” says Harvill, who has been on the job seven years.
One of those problem roofs was on the Lubbock County Law Enforcement Center. The 120,000-square-foot complex had a roof that was installed when the building was constructed in the 1970s. More than 40 years later and plagued with leaks, it made sense to Harvill to undertake a roofing project.
Harvill is a structural engineer, so she knows the importance of a leak-free roof. She also knows the money necessary for such projects is not always readily available in county government. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, funds for roof projects have decreased due to the emphasis institutional and commercial facilities have placed on upgrading HVAC equipment to improve indoor air quality.
“Water intrusion in a building, whether it’s the roof or whether it’s a facade, is very important to take care of because of things that you don’t really see until they’re too late, and then there’s usually damage to something else that’s going on,” Harvill says. “I wanted to make sure we were addressing those issues so we have a sealed building. My annual budget for permanent improvements is around $5 million, which after COVID, it’s really slim on what we can do with that number.”
Lubbock County has a goal of replacing one roof a year, and by 2022, the time had arrived to address the law enforcement center. The roof replacement project cost $1.9 million, which was financed with the help of a tax-exempt lease purchase (TELP) loan, which allows tax-exempt entities to pay for the project over time.
The county paired the roof replacement project with additional energy savings and water-use-reduction projects to complete the funding and projects.
“It didn’t affect our bond rating, which was nice, and it was a 15-year loan,” Harvill says. “We didn’t have enough energy savings to completely pay for the loan, but it contributed to it.”
The roof replacement, which covered 62,000 square feet, also gave the county an opportunity to adapt the roof to better meet the building’s needs.
Lubbock County originally used the building as a jail and converted it into a law enforcement center in 2017. Instead of housing inmates, the building is now being used as a local sheriff’s office, a 911 call and communications center, training rooms and an evidence storage area.
Since the building no longer housed inmates, the new roof did not require the extra drains, exhaust fans and sewer vents that were needed to accommodate the design, which required many cells.
“We don’t need them now, so we were able to take care of those items, too — seal them up, as well as the internal drains,” Harvill says, adding the new roof eliminated a tall parapet.
The highest part of the old roof included a 6-foot wall with a chain-link fence that included an opening to provide daylight and outdoor air in the recreational area of the jail. With no inmates on the premises, the recreation area was no longer needed.
Replacing the roof to match the needs of the law enforcement center was challenging, and the tearoff of the existing roof proved an even bigger challenge.
In addition to removing the original spray-foam and built-up roof materials and the insulation below them, the project’s contractor needed to dispose of the gravel ballast.
That task took one month to complete and required the removal and disposal of 90 loads of gravel and roofing materials. The contractor described the tear-off as the most challenging aspect of the project.
“They used a vacuum truck to suck up the rocks, but because of the size of the roof, the hose wouldn’t get to most of the roof, so they were literally up there with wheelbarrows and shoveling the gravel up to dump it down a chute to a truck,” Harvill says. “That was a lot of labor” and required 12 people to complete.
On the ground, Harvill’s team worked with the law enforcement center’s employees to coordinate parking around the site of the tear-off process.
“They were all really great about it because they were getting a new roof,” she says.
Nearly 50 years elapsed between the roof’s installation and its removal, and the technological differences between the roofing system from the 1970s and the newly installed roof are so vast that any roof was going to be an improvement.
“With newer technology and the products we have available for roofing now, we have much better choices,” Harvill says.
For this roof replacement project, Harvill selected a thermoplastic polyolefin (TPO) system that included membranes of 60- and 115-mil thicknesses with weathering technology.
Before laying down the membranes, the contractors installed lightweight insulating concrete and added expanded polystyrene insulation boards with thicknesses of 8-38 inches to meet R-25 values and to provide a slope for drainage.
Contractors then used a polyurethane adhesive that was rolled in to support the roof and further prevent water intrusion. This step proved valuable and effective as the installation occurred, as contractors walked the roof at all hours of the day to ensure watertightness. Harvill says she expects the new roof to last 20 years.
“The white TPO is on the flat part of the roof and the parapet, so you don’t get the reflection for a couple of reasons, whether it’s reflecting to the highway or reflection from the sun back on to the TPO,” Harvill says. “The old roof just really looked bad. We have a highway that runs within probably two blocks of the jail, and it’s very visible. Some of (the decision to replace the roof) was just visibility. It looked bad.”
When the contractor — a team Harvill has worked on successful projects — demonstrated the benefits of TPO roofing, she says she was all in.
“Just knowing what the evolution of roofing project products was and seeing that, nobody had to sell me on TPO,” she says. “I worked with this roofer a lot, and we have a good relationship, so I trust him.”
The contractor helped Harvill’s team set up a preventive maintenance plan that includes full inspections twice a year. In addition to ensuring no trash accumulates on the roof and drains remain unclogged, inspectors check joints and sealants to make sure the adhesives are performing as intended.
“If there’s anything that’s found, if it’s something we can address internally, then we definitely do that,” she says.
With the law enforcement center roof replacement completed, Harvill is on to the next project — a 500,000-square-foot detention center with a roof that makes up about two-thirds of the facility’s square footage. The building’s current spray foam roof is about 17 years old, but the size of the project will require a considerable amount of time and money to complete.
“We have a lot of leaks on that roof, but even doing one section of it, we’re probably looking at $2 and a half to $3 million dollars,” she says. “It’s a large roof, but it’s not going to take more than a year. I’ll try to split it between two fiscal years to get it done. It may not happen, but it’s just timing on projects, as with everything.”
Roofs are out-of-sight, out-of-mind for many building occupants and visitors if they remain leak free. When leaks develop and inside components are ruined, they become a serious problem for maintenance and engineering managers. While a roofing project can be costly and time-consuming, Harvill knows they are typically projects that will pay for themselves soon.
“Roofs and facades are extremely important,” she says. “It’s important to take care of them because if you don’t, they can cause so many other problems and so much damage.”
Dave Lubach is executive editor of the facility market. He has more than nine years of experience writing about facility management and maintenance and engineering issues.
