Even when there were manufacturing issues in the past it would still usually take at least 7-10 years for this to happen. But this is Usually just a sign of an old TPO roof that needs to be replaced.
Only membrane I’ve seen this problem with was JP Stevens tpo in areas with ponding water. The tpo above the scrim turned back into little bead exposing all the scrim like that
Fiber tite PVC roofs do it bad, there’s lawsuits out right now on it because of hail damage. Roof gets so brittle before the warranty is over the hail will leave 100s of little swirl holes. This roof is old probably over 30 years old, most flat roofs are 30 year warranties.
The lawsuit is for PVC fiber tite roofs, are you sure that your roof is TPO?
Actually found something on it, it was all Targets i went to to meet the lawyers at too. Had to cut samples out for them to take back and test and 100s of pictures.
https://casetext.com/case/target-corp-v-seaman-corp-2
Its under I. Background
The building owner says the roof is only 4 years old. (Doubt)
The building is only used for storage so no one ever goes on the roof. Is this just from straight up erosion from the rain water going into the drains?
Yeah he mentioned before I went up there that the redid the roof over his part off the building and the small corner owned by someone else wasn't touched and has since completely collapsed.
So when I called him to tell him the extent of the damage I said something along the lines of "I know you said the roof is newer than the other part of the building so if it was done less than 15 years ago it could potentially be still under warranty but it looks older than that." And he was like "Oh well it was only done 4-5 years ago"
Mf it was probably done 4-5 years ago 15 years ago lmao
Are these two close-up photos representative of the general roof condition throughout, or is this isolated and localized damage? If this is throughout, then the roof is probably PVC and likely much older than 20 years. If this is an isolated condition then this is very consistent with chemical-related deterioration.
I tried to upload all the pictures but it wouldn't let me for some reason. It definitely seemed to be around the areas where water would gather or flow through.
I'm no roofer or anything so I have no idea but the building owner is cheap. Is it a possiblity that he could have hired a cheap as person to do the job 4-5 years ago and they used some old stock PVC or some shit? Or is that unheard of?
This whole thing is caused by a few factors. They don’t have properly sumped drains which allows water to sit around that ring on the drain if the weep holes aren’t cleaned out. Which then results in ponding water. TPO is typically white (now there are more colors than you can think of) so when the ponding water sits on a roof and the sun hits it with UV rays it creates almost like a microwave effect which causes this scrimming out and rapid deterioration of membrane. Best repair is to cut out a section till you get a decent underside of the old membrane and reverse weld it as the bottom probably hasn’t had too much exposure so it should weld in theory. That’s not always the case though FYI.
That would make sense. We go up there once in the early spring and once in the fall.
I'm a maintenance tech for the company and we have other buildings that aren't used just neglected storage units with the same(?) roofing. Do you have any advice for preventing this in the future? Some of the buildings seem to have sunk in places so the water can't reach the drains.
Mainly do routine wash downs of the roof so dirt doesn’t collect(creates an abrasive layer that makes deterioration happen sooner than normal. Maybe some tpo seam tape and or a coating to put over areas that seem to be deteriorating so the roof last a lot longer. Biggest issue is that once it starts to frail, it’ll keep moving along the tpo.
As far as sinking areas go, that’s just how it’s gonna be, maybe get a guy with a squeege to go up there after big rains to keep the water off the roof.
I'm the only guy unfortunately and there's about 30 buildings spread out across the state lol
I can probably convince the CEO to add wash downs into the biannual check list but any more than that and they might be against it for some reason. Worth a try though.
Not doubting you just curious but isn't the seam tape going to trap more water along the seams? Or is that just expected anyway to as long as the wash downs happen it'd be ok?
Don't suppose you have any more advice I can apply to standing seam roofs too? 😅
Now that is interesting.
The building is owned mostly by the guy I was working for. But one corner of the building is owned by another company that abandoned it. So when the roof was done they ignored the other companies corner of the building.
Which is all tar...
You think that part of the building is running off onto this part and dissolving the TPO? Or do you think the cheap ass roofers just laid the TPO over the old tar roof?
Entirely possible that they laid over the old roof. This is a cost saving technique. Dump fees, plus labor to tear off the old roof. Could be close to 50 percent of the cost of a new roof. Some owners opt for an over the topper. Because it's cheaper. Without a separation layer ( a layer of insulation or protection board or some kind) the off gassing tar roof, and the incompatible nature of the materials will cause early deterioration.
I have also seen TPO roofs simply powderize themselves from UV exposure, and that looks identical to the first photo. The second appears like something is bleeding through the TPO if that makes sense. But it could be someone came to repair and used an bituminous product that is incompatible and that's the black streak I see
It wouldn't be the cause, but it would contribute. Especially as the TPO deteriorated it would change colors because of that exposure, causing it to yellow or orange, which eliminates its ability to reflect uv, which will build up heat
Does the building owner have any kind of warranty with it being 4 years old? Could be helpful to coming to a conclusion on what the material actually is. I, personally, have seen Firestone TPO do this. But not in a 4 year span.
My guess is it's not actually TPO but an older discontinued product called Hypelon. That shit pretty much just dissolves and left the scrim, which is what you have happening here.
If it were hypalon, it would have a blue back and you would see a little bit of blue shining through instead of black. In addition you could walk over to any section that was still good, rub your hand on the surface and see a white dust. Hypalon was discontinued 15 years ago.
So what you have on your roof is a known failure for TPO
Op, I will pay you to collect a large sample of that and mail it out. It's a known defect with TPO I have some samples but I'm looking for bigger ones.
I've talked about this a lot on this board, but prior to 2009 TPO used a formula based on halogenated fire retarded unfortunately this formula did not hold well against extreme temperature, as well as some chemical weaknesses. Usually wear this occurred is in areas where water built up, where the sunlight would effectively be magnified against a membrane, causing it to have temperatures above 130° f which would cause a rapid weathering similar to what you're seeing here. In my post history I've actually got a couple samples of this, but most of mine are no bigger than 2x2.
This is why there is a sudden shift from 2003 to 2009 in the industry for TPO when it came to regulating that heat resistance. It's also why there was a massive formula change am I some of the older guys say that TPO technically isn't 20 years old.
So to sum it up, it's caused by a poor formula combined with heat. Sometimes if there was a chemical contamination this can accelerate it as well
I'll talk to the building owner today and see if they'll save a sample for me when the contractors turn up. Feel free to DM me. I'll try and get the piece you need. 👍
Poorly manufactured TPO, combined with ponding water and heat buildup. Probably add in a little bit of chemical contamination either from tar, arsenic, or some HVAC cleaners can cause it too
OP I found a video of this exact TPO issue. It doesn't go much into detail but it shows you this is tpo not PVC as some here keep calling out
[TPO is awful](https://youtube.com/shorts/9y2OY-BaAis?si=AYxOsOB39z11gMss)
Guessing that it’s a 45mil but I’ve even seen 060 look like this.
If left under water, built up debris or vegetation the membrane can severely deteriorate thanks to the UV rays being magnified by the standing water. It just accelerates the break down of the material. Simply due to neglect.
No different than if you left metal on metal over time it will start to rust. To use as an example.
noticed this with Steven's and Firestone. If it's not leaking and the insulation soaked it can be coated but it's only a bandaide until the roof can be replaced.
Look at the seam, it's white over gray and it doesn't smooth over. Durolast is wide over white and the seams shrink as you well done. That is no way Durolast
Plus as a disintegrates around the scrim, you can see the edges are gray or black too, but the seam alone is enough to prove it isn't Durolast
It looks like it’s just the target patch for the drain the only thing that makes sense to me is chemical contamination. Probably a scrap sheet from the shop that got some shit on it that made it break down. Cut it out replace the wet iso and seam in a new target patch easy fix.
Near an airport? Is this a restaurant? Looks like chemical incompatibility. The old TPO formula would do something similar. That formula was changed 20 years ago. All manufactures got together and fixed it.
Everyone but firestone, who refused to acknowledge the issue until about a decade later. Just a weird little fun fact about Firestone, when the whole industry was acknowledging it and changing it in 2009, they actually released a memo stating that they had never changed and had no intent to
Trocal would not have had that Scrim by the time it left the US. Unless this is in Europe.
Look at the seam, it's white over gray. That Can't be durolast or trocal, doesn't fit the color schemes
Is it installed upside down? The duralast puts the scrim closer to the bottom so there's more Mills above, so if they put it upside down this could be possible.
Even when there were manufacturing issues in the past it would still usually take at least 7-10 years for this to happen. But this is Usually just a sign of an old TPO roof that needs to be replaced.
Only membrane I’ve seen this problem with was JP Stevens tpo in areas with ponding water. The tpo above the scrim turned back into little bead exposing all the scrim like that
This
Fiber tite PVC roofs do it bad, there’s lawsuits out right now on it because of hail damage. Roof gets so brittle before the warranty is over the hail will leave 100s of little swirl holes. This roof is old probably over 30 years old, most flat roofs are 30 year warranties.
Any info where i can find info about this lawsuit?
The lawsuit is for PVC fiber tite roofs, are you sure that your roof is TPO? Actually found something on it, it was all Targets i went to to meet the lawyers at too. Had to cut samples out for them to take back and test and 100s of pictures. https://casetext.com/case/target-corp-v-seaman-corp-2 Its under I. Background
Sent a DM
The building owner says the roof is only 4 years old. (Doubt) The building is only used for storage so no one ever goes on the roof. Is this just from straight up erosion from the rain water going into the drains?
Dude is straight up lying to you This roof is over 20 years old and most likely older than that.
It was installed in the Carter administration so it should be fine still right?
The roof has malaise.
Yeah he mentioned before I went up there that the redid the roof over his part off the building and the small corner owned by someone else wasn't touched and has since completely collapsed. So when I called him to tell him the extent of the damage I said something along the lines of "I know you said the roof is newer than the other part of the building so if it was done less than 15 years ago it could potentially be still under warranty but it looks older than that." And he was like "Oh well it was only done 4-5 years ago" Mf it was probably done 4-5 years ago 15 years ago lmao
I've got some samples of TPO doing this after about 5 years. But that said this problem was supposed to be done away with in the early 2000s
Right - modern TPO won’t look like this in that kind of timeframe but the older membrane would.
In the same way that my generation still feels like the 90s are 10 years ago... Time gets away from you when you're older! LOL
I definitely feel that haha
Are these two close-up photos representative of the general roof condition throughout, or is this isolated and localized damage? If this is throughout, then the roof is probably PVC and likely much older than 20 years. If this is an isolated condition then this is very consistent with chemical-related deterioration.
I tried to upload all the pictures but it wouldn't let me for some reason. It definitely seemed to be around the areas where water would gather or flow through. I'm no roofer or anything so I have no idea but the building owner is cheap. Is it a possiblity that he could have hired a cheap as person to do the job 4-5 years ago and they used some old stock PVC or some shit? Or is that unheard of?
My 3 year old vinyl RV roof looks better than this "4" year old
This whole thing is caused by a few factors. They don’t have properly sumped drains which allows water to sit around that ring on the drain if the weep holes aren’t cleaned out. Which then results in ponding water. TPO is typically white (now there are more colors than you can think of) so when the ponding water sits on a roof and the sun hits it with UV rays it creates almost like a microwave effect which causes this scrimming out and rapid deterioration of membrane. Best repair is to cut out a section till you get a decent underside of the old membrane and reverse weld it as the bottom probably hasn’t had too much exposure so it should weld in theory. That’s not always the case though FYI.
Maybe erosion from rainwater or UV light baking the shit out of it
That’s your issue there. No one goes up there to make sure it’s getting washed down in the summers opposed to just baking in the sun.
That would make sense. We go up there once in the early spring and once in the fall. I'm a maintenance tech for the company and we have other buildings that aren't used just neglected storage units with the same(?) roofing. Do you have any advice for preventing this in the future? Some of the buildings seem to have sunk in places so the water can't reach the drains.
Mainly do routine wash downs of the roof so dirt doesn’t collect(creates an abrasive layer that makes deterioration happen sooner than normal. Maybe some tpo seam tape and or a coating to put over areas that seem to be deteriorating so the roof last a lot longer. Biggest issue is that once it starts to frail, it’ll keep moving along the tpo. As far as sinking areas go, that’s just how it’s gonna be, maybe get a guy with a squeege to go up there after big rains to keep the water off the roof.
I'm the only guy unfortunately and there's about 30 buildings spread out across the state lol I can probably convince the CEO to add wash downs into the biannual check list but any more than that and they might be against it for some reason. Worth a try though. Not doubting you just curious but isn't the seam tape going to trap more water along the seams? Or is that just expected anyway to as long as the wash downs happen it'd be ok? Don't suppose you have any more advice I can apply to standing seam roofs too? 😅
Ponding water and the Sun, this is not a 4 year old roof tho.
Standing water from a clogged drain
30 to 50 years
TCL was only brought to America 37 years ago....
The first photo appears to be UV exposure. the second photo appears to be contaminated by a bituminous product of some sort
Now that is interesting. The building is owned mostly by the guy I was working for. But one corner of the building is owned by another company that abandoned it. So when the roof was done they ignored the other companies corner of the building. Which is all tar... You think that part of the building is running off onto this part and dissolving the TPO? Or do you think the cheap ass roofers just laid the TPO over the old tar roof?
Entirely possible that they laid over the old roof. This is a cost saving technique. Dump fees, plus labor to tear off the old roof. Could be close to 50 percent of the cost of a new roof. Some owners opt for an over the topper. Because it's cheaper. Without a separation layer ( a layer of insulation or protection board or some kind) the off gassing tar roof, and the incompatible nature of the materials will cause early deterioration. I have also seen TPO roofs simply powderize themselves from UV exposure, and that looks identical to the first photo. The second appears like something is bleeding through the TPO if that makes sense. But it could be someone came to repair and used an bituminous product that is incompatible and that's the black streak I see
It wouldn't be the cause, but it would contribute. Especially as the TPO deteriorated it would change colors because of that exposure, causing it to yellow or orange, which eliminates its ability to reflect uv, which will build up heat
I wish I could add more pictures of the whole roof to see if you guys can spot anything I'm missing
Time
Does the building owner have any kind of warranty with it being 4 years old? Could be helpful to coming to a conclusion on what the material actually is. I, personally, have seen Firestone TPO do this. But not in a 4 year span.
Time
My guess is it's not actually TPO but an older discontinued product called Hypelon. That shit pretty much just dissolves and left the scrim, which is what you have happening here.
Is there a good way to tell the difference besides seeing it dissolve like this? Lol
If it were hypalon, it would have a blue back and you would see a little bit of blue shining through instead of black. In addition you could walk over to any section that was still good, rub your hand on the surface and see a white dust. Hypalon was discontinued 15 years ago. So what you have on your roof is a known failure for TPO
Ok sweet. Good to know. Thanks!
Op, I will pay you to collect a large sample of that and mail it out. It's a known defect with TPO I have some samples but I'm looking for bigger ones. I've talked about this a lot on this board, but prior to 2009 TPO used a formula based on halogenated fire retarded unfortunately this formula did not hold well against extreme temperature, as well as some chemical weaknesses. Usually wear this occurred is in areas where water built up, where the sunlight would effectively be magnified against a membrane, causing it to have temperatures above 130° f which would cause a rapid weathering similar to what you're seeing here. In my post history I've actually got a couple samples of this, but most of mine are no bigger than 2x2. This is why there is a sudden shift from 2003 to 2009 in the industry for TPO when it came to regulating that heat resistance. It's also why there was a massive formula change am I some of the older guys say that TPO technically isn't 20 years old. So to sum it up, it's caused by a poor formula combined with heat. Sometimes if there was a chemical contamination this can accelerate it as well
I'll talk to the building owner today and see if they'll save a sample for me when the contractors turn up. Feel free to DM me. I'll try and get the piece you need. 👍
Poorly manufactured TPO, combined with ponding water and heat buildup. Probably add in a little bit of chemical contamination either from tar, arsenic, or some HVAC cleaners can cause it too
OP I found a video of this exact TPO issue. It doesn't go much into detail but it shows you this is tpo not PVC as some here keep calling out [TPO is awful](https://youtube.com/shorts/9y2OY-BaAis?si=AYxOsOB39z11gMss)
Oh interesting. Thanks I'll check it out!
Grease
looks like sun exposure and old age
Manufacturer, old roofs also UV rays and ponding water work together against the membrane. I've seen it dozens of times it doesn't matter what brand.
Guessing that it’s a 45mil but I’ve even seen 060 look like this. If left under water, built up debris or vegetation the membrane can severely deteriorate thanks to the UV rays being magnified by the standing water. It just accelerates the break down of the material. Simply due to neglect. No different than if you left metal on metal over time it will start to rust. To use as an example.
noticed this with Steven's and Firestone. If it's not leaking and the insulation soaked it can be coated but it's only a bandaide until the roof can be replaced.
It's big time leaking lol
Never seen tpo deteriorate like that before
Your roof is as watertight as my 3 year old ass blasted boxers.
Age. That is PVC not TPO.
How can you tell the difference between tpo and pvc based on this picture? Not doubting you, just looking to learn something new.
That scrim reminds me of PVC. I could be wrong, but it reminds me of that condemned PVC, don’t remember the manufacturer…
How’d you get a flair?
Its in the sub instructions somewhere.
Ah ok. I'll pass that on. Thanks!
Is that not a Duralast? Most of them that I've seen have looked like this.
Look at the seam, it's white over gray and it doesn't smooth over. Durolast is wide over white and the seams shrink as you well done. That is no way Durolast Plus as a disintegrates around the scrim, you can see the edges are gray or black too, but the seam alone is enough to prove it isn't Durolast
Appreciate the insight!
I was zooming in and thinking the same thing
I've laid a ton of DL, never had issues with the membrane but I think it is PVC for sure. This does not look like TPO.
Older TPO, which is more similar to FPO, looked like this. The defect was pretty common in the 90s and early 2000s
It looks like it’s just the target patch for the drain the only thing that makes sense to me is chemical contamination. Probably a scrap sheet from the shop that got some shit on it that made it break down. Cut it out replace the wet iso and seam in a new target patch easy fix.
It's in a lot of other places too tbf. It just wouldn't let me post more pics for some reason.
Acidity or gas / oil perhaps
Near an airport? Is this a restaurant? Looks like chemical incompatibility. The old TPO formula would do something similar. That formula was changed 20 years ago. All manufactures got together and fixed it.
No but the other section of the roof has a lot of tar on it. This building is just storage. It's next to some train tracks but that's about it.
Everyone but firestone, who refused to acknowledge the issue until about a decade later. Just a weird little fun fact about Firestone, when the whole industry was acknowledging it and changing it in 2009, they actually released a memo stating that they had never changed and had no intent to
Old ass TPO. Replace
CB Hornet
Stevens
Looks like Hypalon membrane. Rip it off. Throw it all in the trash. The cause of this damage is most likely due to a chemical incompatibility though.
Kitchen Grease? Is it near a vent?
Nothing near any vents from what I can see. Mainly just drains. And the building doesn't have a kitchen.
I was also guessing a durolast roof or a very old trocal roof. Would need a picture of the seams.
You can kinda see one of the seems in the second picture.
Trocal would not have had that Scrim by the time it left the US. Unless this is in Europe. Look at the seam, it's white over gray. That Can't be durolast or trocal, doesn't fit the color schemes
Is it installed upside down? The duralast puts the scrim closer to the bottom so there's more Mills above, so if they put it upside down this could be possible.
It's not duralast, duralast has a white back, this has a gray back. In addition, tan Duralast is intentionally installed upside down. Fun fact
No bleed blocker