The Value of Alpha SPF Roofing: An Alpha Case Study at William Lipscomb Elementary School

Abstract

An Alpha roof is a type of Spray Polyurethane Foam (SPF) roofing system that has been documented to be one of the highest performing roofs in the industry. Despite the high level of performance of the Alpha SPF roofs, owners still try to protect themselves by purchasing warranties. When the Dallas Independent School District (DISD) did not receive enough funding to purchase the Alpha roofs for their school buildings, general contractors started shopping the Alpha contractors. The demand for Alpha roofs during DISD bond programs exceeded the supply of Alpha vendors. DISD lowered the requirements and the contractors and manufacturers delivered lower quality roofs. DISD still required the performance of the Alpha roofing system, even though they bought lower performing systems without the quality control requirements of the higher performing Alpha roofs. DISD was not happy with the lower performance on some of the inexpensive roofs. This paper describes a case study that proposes that high roof performance is a result of expert contractors proving their past performance, detailed preplanning, manufacturers doing quality control, contractors tracking their time and cost deviations and independent third party inspections. The expert Alpha contractor completed the project with the best dimensional stability metrics (dimensional stability is a metric of long lasting roofs). The roof installation was completed in 20 days and saved DISD over 20% of the cost of the roof, despite an increase in the scope of work. It was the first DISD project that had no punch-list items after the final walkthrough. DISD was extremely satisfied with the roof and the Alpha program demonstrated its effectiveness in the installation of roofs.

Ponding and Blisters – Study of SPF roofs

“…SPF is a lightweight, renewable roofing system with excellent insulating performance and can be installed over existing built-up roofing systems. However, the SPF roofing system's performance depends on the accurate and technically competent installation of the two-component system; thus, its performance depends on the contractor's expertise (Kashiwagi et al, 2002(Kashiwagi et al, , 2016(Kashiwagi et al, , 2017. 80% of building construction and facility problems pertain to roofing and waterproofing (Gajjar et al, 2014a).…”