Sometimes a small up-front investment pays off. Though the tale has shape-shifted over time, New College (part of Oxford University) replaced its 1371 dining hall’s massive oak roofing timbers by harvesting mighty oaks planted hundreds of years earlier for just such a renovation. Atlas Obscura points out that the tiny acorns were given plenty of time — around 492 years — to reach the sizes needed for the 1863 restoration. A small investment of time and money for roof maintenance can pay off for facilities managers, too.
Investment of Time
How long does roof maintenance take you and the professional, commercial roofer you engage? For you, it could be literally minutes. Call up your local, trustworthy commercial roofer and schedule an appointment for the company’s highly trained roofers to come out for a service call.
The job will take a few hours, perhaps, but will result in a clean, carefully maintained roof. If you opt to start with a thorough inspection, you may need to devote a bit more of your own time to working with the crew foreman to catalog and discuss potential problems. Still, compared to the time needed to plan and execute an emergency repair job, it is very little time out of your day.
Investment of Money
Consider the charges that will mount quickly for an emergency roofing call:
- Equipment
- Off-hours service charges
- Crew time
- Materials
Add to that your own facilities crew’s time trying to deal with the emergency until the professionals arrive. You are spending a lot of money on an unplanned roof repair when you could have used a fraction of that money on planned roof maintenance.
Payoff
The investments of time and money you make this year, and next, and the next, may not seem like they are paying off. But consider: every year you can delay reroofing or tear-off and replacement is money in your pocket.
Conscientious roof maintenance gives you time to save for a new roof, plan the opportune year and season, and avoid extra expenses for rushed work. With regular maintenance, too, you can get an accurate forecast for just when the old roof will need replacement.
Vanguard Roofing is a leader in roof maintenance, roof preservation, and commercial roof replacement. Contact us today to learn more about our roof maintenance plans that can save every facilities manager time and money, while lengthening the time your roof remains in service.
