It strikes me that anyone who plops 600
pounds of anything on a flat-pitched roof without investigating the structure
underneath disserves to get sued.
I suppose you could say the AC guy assumed
the roof must've been designed (dare I say "engineered" or would it be
"architected?"--I'm guessing not back in 1915 era) for the local snow load (did
they have snow load charts back then?--a 1921 copy of "Architectural Details for
every type of building" by Wm. A. Bradford of Chicago IL that I have
doesn't have anything in it) and the AC unit is probably in that order of
magnitude so (since it didn't cover the entire roof) it shouldn't have stressed
the roof past its design point but that ignores that the structure still needs
to support the snow load in addition to the AC unit...
A "cheap and proper" way to set the
unit might've been to put it on a frame that bridged the roof span, picking
up structural walls inside the building. Did Mr. AC Man make any effort in his
curbing to distribute the load or pick up the strucural parts of the building
below the roof?
Did the AC man dispute that the original
roof structure was marginal?
Did anyone document what the old structure
was prior to the replacement?
Did anyone take pictures of the rot, opened
joints in the roll roofing (recognizing that open joints might not have shown up
well in a photo), etc.?
Signed,
Witless for the prosecution
It's that time of year when I ask my legitimate question again:
I have a guy who, in the summer of 2001, installed a 600#
rooftop-mounted air conditioning unit on a very low-slope (1/8" per
foot) roof, for a Private Eye who had recently bought a building built
about 1800. The 1800 section has a gable roof, and is abutted by a
low-slope addition dating from 1850 or so; the low slope area pitches down
from the eave of the gabled section. The a/c was installed on a section
of roof about 6x12', dating from c. 1915, which filled in a recess
on one side of the building; my .
A month or so after installing the ac unit, the Private Eye claims his
roof started to leak; our guy schmeared (this schmear's for you, Ruth)
some tar on the roof in the area, but the leak continued. There were
some additional attempts to repair it, with no reported success. Finally
after 2 years the Private Eye calls in A Architect, who tells him that the
roof framing is barely adequate to support the roof, much less this monster
a/c unit, and it all needs to be torn out and reframed. The architect
also reports that this nearly flat roof has deflected, causing seams in the
roll roofing below the a/c to open, that the open seams have leaked onto the
framing, and that the framing is rotting.
Seems to me that 2 years is too soon for rot to begin under these
circumstances; I wouldn't argue with rot after 5 or 10 years. However,
given 1) the low slope of the roof, 2) the inadequate framing, 3) the
presence of a drain in (rather than a gutter next to) this section
of infill roofing, 4) the fact that rain and snow runoff from the
adjacent gable roof dump onto this low slope roof and can only drain slowly
from it, it seems very likely to me that this water penetration, and the
resulting rot, predates the air conditioner installation. I
should add that the rot and original framing has all been replaced (so I can't
see anything myself), along with interior finishes. The Private Eye
claims this cost him 35 grand, but he wants my air conditioner guy to pay
him something like $55 grand, on an air conditioning job for which the
Private Eye paid $13K.
Do any of you geniuses out there have any information on how quickly
rot forms?
Thanks.
Ralph