Commercial work at St Helens RFC. The parapet wall along the edge of the stand roof was cleaned down and sealed where water had been getting past the coping and causing ongoing damp.
This was a commercial job for St Helens RFC, carried out on the stand roof itself — a long run of profiled metal sheeting with a parapet wall capped in flat coping slabs running along the edge of it. Water had been getting past that wall and showing as ongoing damp, so we were asked to seal it rather than keep chasing the damp indoors.
Access was across the sheeted roof, working along the coping with the pitch and the stands below us. The fault was not in the face of the brickwork; it was the line where the coping slabs overhang and meet the top of the metal sheets, plus the joints between the slabs themselves. That junction is the sort of detail our flat roof repair work deals with as often as splits and blisters in felt.
Along its length the coping had collected the usual film of dirt, moss and loose material that builds up on any horizontal surface at that height, and nothing will bond to a surface in that state. Under the overhang, the line where the slabs sit down onto the ribbed sheeting had opened in places, and the fixings through the sheet at that point sit right in the path of anything running off the wall.
The other thing worth noting on a parapet of this size is how flat the coping run is. Water that should shed off the top sits instead, then finds the slab joints, and the damp below arrives a long way from where it went in.
We cleaned and prepared the whole surface first, taking off the moss, the dirt and anything loose so that the sealant had sound material to grip. Then a waterproof sealant was applied across the prepared areas and run as a continuous bead along the junction between the coping and the sheeting, worked in round each fixing and washer rather than skipped over.
The coping areas at the top were reinforced as part of the same visit, so that water is shed off the wall instead of pooling on it and seeping down through the joints. The photographs show that bead in close-up, following the profile of the sheet rib by rib.
Final integrity checks were made along the full run before we packed up — walking the line back, looking at every joint and every fixing we had sealed, and making sure nothing had been left short at the ends. On a stand roof there is no quick way back up, so it is worth the extra half-hour.
We do the same sort of sealing and patching on commercial and domestic flat roofs across the region, including flat roof repairs in St Helens. If a parapet or a flat covering on your building is putting water inside, get in touch for a free quote and we will come and look at it.
Tell us what the roof is doing and roughly where you are. We will come and look, and you get a written price before anything starts.
