Built Up Roofing
Built up roofing was one of the most popular type of roofing in the U.S. for over 100 years, from somewhere around 1880s until 1970s.
This way of roofing is common on those buildings with a flat roof and the ones that are being considered having a low-slope.
Built up roofing is made by using multiple layers that are produced of asphalt and coal tar bituminous and various fabrics. These layers put together will assure a strong waterproof membrane.
Nowadays, built up roofing is in great competition with other roofing systems such as metal roofing. However, many companies that specialized in this type of roofing come forward constantly with all sort of solutions, offers and new materials for their potential clients. In the last half of the 20th century, due to the fact that built up roofing has encountered lots of ground loses in the roofing industry worldwide, many companies either filled for bankruptcy, either struggled to face the future.
And the long awaited better times came at the beginning of the 1990s, when opportunities where being given by the eastern European countries that came out of the Communist Block, the spawning of economical relationships between many African, Asian and South American countries. The long periods that they were closed from different industries outside of their borders made a huge impact on their economy. Many foreign companies were choosing to invest in these countries, because of the low costs, cheaper labour force, new markets to implement their services and products.
One of the industries that was showing huge interest for foreign investors was the built up roofing of the buildings and the houses that had back then over-aged and low quality materials used in this industry. For more than 10 years, the foreign companies made a lot of profits out of providing built up roofing that was offered with a warranty between eight to 10 years. Not only the installation of these systems was profitable, but also the selling of materials used for the installation of such systems; the selling of the materials was successful because many clients either choose to do the built up roofing on their own, either intermediary companies purchased a huge amount of supplying materials in order to distribute them in areas where the big companies did not had access to. The asphalt and coal tar bituminous components where cheaper to be purchased when they were being used for certain constructions that did not necessarily need the full built up roofing process.
Slowly, but surely, the industry is going through another rough period, as potential clients tend to choose other alternatives for roofing their buildings and their houses; they prefer to spend a larger sum of money on, let us say, metal roofing so that they will make a lot of savings in the future, because this system is having a warranty of five to 10 times longer than that of the built up roofing system and the maintenance provided to metal roofs is either little as possible, either not existent at all.
Nevertheless, the companies that survived harsh times in the past are now looking to attract customers with different options for built up roofing, such as the so called “green-up roofing”, which is a system that is letting the clients to actually put plants or to have a true garden on their roofs thanks to the present materials used for built up roofing.