Garage Roof Repair – Do It Yourself

Garage Roof Repair

Garage – a favorite place of “rest” of all Russian men. Here you can sleep, chat with “colleagues”, treat your pet and just be alone with your thoughts. But what if the leaking roof breaks this unity? That’s right, you need to immediately correct the situation and begin repairing the roof of the garage, because if it flows in one place, then in a few days another leak will appear, and after it one more and more. And so it will be endlessly, or rather, until your patience bursts and you take up the ax.

Content

• Soft roof repair

• Prepare for the upcoming work
• In detail about repair manipulations
• How to lay ruberoid
• Stacking Bicrost

 

The specifics of repairing a hard roof

Soft roof repair

Why exactly the ax? – you ask, but because in addition to roofing material and bitumen mastic, you will also need this tool. In general, the following materials and tools are needed to repair a soft roof:

• ax
• knife
• building hair dryer
• gas-burner
• gas bottle
• tin bucket
• bituminous mastic
• roofing material
• broom

Prepare for the upcoming work

In most garage cooperatives, all garages go in one continuous row, therefore, if you decide not to “patch” the roof in pieces, but completely change it, then you will have to go to your neighbors to agree to do this at the same time. Otherwise, you are at great risk of ruining your relationship with your co-op colleagues, since by repairing your roof you will definitely destroy part of the roof of your neighbors. Surely they will not be happy with such a nuisance.

But, as a rule, they cannot be found in solidarity, so feel free to climb onto the roof of your garage and proceed to clean it of debris. True, there is one BUT that must be taken into account – you need to do flooring or repair a soft roof in dry, warm weather.

After removing leaves and garbage with a broom, carefully inspect the surface of the roof, perhaps there is a chance not to remove it completely, but simply to cut down the most problematic places with an ax and patch up the holes that have formed. As a rule, on the soft roof, which is already more than a dozen years old, cracks, swelling or simply seams between the layers of roofing material can form. Having found this, you need to take a sharp inflexible knife and cut the problem area crosswise. Then bend the edges and press them firmly to the roof surface so that they do not interfere with work and movement.

The resulting holes must be thoroughly cleaned of dust and all moisture removed from there with a building hair dryer or gas burner. The preparation of the roof is over.

In detail about repair manipulations

Repairs do-it-yourself garage roofs – the matter is not complicated and does not require any special skills and knowledge. Take at least pouring tar or bitumen into the cut holes. Why is it necessary to coat the roof, or rather problem areas, with bituminous mastic? This is done to waterproof the damaged area, as well as for better adhesion of materials to each other..

The most popular way to repair a soft roof is to cover it with roofing material. This building material has one, but very important advantage – it is cheap, and this is perhaps the most important advantage of it. Although in addition to this, it also perfectly protects the roof from leaking.

In order to patch up our holes, you will need several pieces of roofing material, which must first be cut from a roll. Keep track of the size – the cut should not be too large or too small.

The finished piece must be laid inside the hole as a patch and pressed tightly. On top of it, apply another layer of mastic or resin. Now you can bend back the edges of the old roofing material and seal the resulting joints with another patch. Only now the size of the piece should be 15-20 cm larger than the damaged area (so you will provide reliable waterproofing of the joints). Brush it all over again with mastic, for sure.

Well, then you can lay a layer of roofing material, or you can leave everything as it is. But still, it’s better to protect yourself for another ten years and cover the entire roof with fresh panels.

How to lay ruberoid

Before laying the roofing material, you need to give him time so that he “lies down” and straightened. 24 hours will be enough for him.

For laying the panels, resin (tar) will be required, which will connect the old coating with the new one and will reliably protect all joints from leakage. “Cooking” it is necessary in a tin bucket or any other container, which after work will not be a pity to throw out. The recipe is simple: use a burner to melt the tar to the consistency of thick sour cream.

Having poured part of the roof, lay down the first canvas and just walk on it, although the resin grabs quite quickly. The second sheet should be laid on the first with a small overlap (about 10-12 cm), and when blisters or bubbles appear, which is quite likely, you need to make incisions with a knife and press tightly again.

Important: you need to start laying roofing material from the lowest point of the roof.

The first layer of roofing material should dry for 12 hours, and only after that you can proceed to the flooring of the second, and the joints of these two layers should not coincide. This is done in order to eliminate the likelihood of moisture entering between the two layers. Pay special attention to those places where the roof is adjacent to the walls of neighboring buildings or other structures..

Important: the number of layers of roofing material directly depends on the angle of the roof. If the slope is less than 15 degrees, then you need to set at least 4 layers, if more than 16, then at least two.

Stacking Bicrost

Bikrost is a surfaced waterproofing and roofing material that is ideal for repairing an old garage roof. It must be laid as follows:

• a roll of material is rolled out on a cleaned and carefully primed roof, but not all at once, but as needed.
• since the bottom layer of bicrost is oxidized bitumen, it must be heated with a gas burner, paying attention to the corners and edges of the canvas.
• heating the panel in this way, press it to the roof surface, gradually unrolling the roll.
• the overlap between two adjacent sheets should not be less than 7 cm.
• the work needs to be done quickly and efficiently, since bitumen sets in a few minutes.

In principle, such work is practically no different from roofing felt, except that you do not have to spend time heating the resin and applying it to the roof surface.

The specifics of repairing a hard roof

Some garages, as a rule, are separate buildings, have a rigid roof made of metal or corrugated board. It is not difficult to repair such a roof, because it is not difficult to replace a damaged sheet, although there are situations when, for example, a tree or a meteorite fell on a garage (joke!). Then you have to re-install the corrugated board, and, perhaps, along with the crate.

Let the latter be whole. We take a sheet of corrugated board and fasten it with a screw to the very top of the roof. Fasteners need to be made from the middle of the sheet to its edges. The second sheet is laid on the first lap on a single wave and fixed in a similar way.

The length of a standard garage is six meters, and the length of a rigid roof sheet is 1 meter. Thus, it is not difficult to calculate that you need only 12 sheets of corrugated board in order to cover the entire roof.

The metal tile is mounted on the contrary – from the bottom up, but not only this is its difference from corrugated board. Fasteners should be carried out using self-tapping screws with a rubber gasket, which plays the role of a limiter. You need to overlap the sheets of tiles, and for reliable fixing of the rows between themselves, special locks are used located at the bottom and top of the sheet.

As you can see now, repairing the roof of the garage with your own hands is quite real and quite simple. The main thing is to observe safety measures, because two meters above ground level is not a joke to you. You can easily slide down and break your arms and legs. Be careful and attentive.!