Denver, Colorado (11/2/2000) --- The primary consideration for roofing contractors, Weathercraft Company of Colorado Springs in reroofing the famous five-star Broadmoor Hotel was to make sure there was as little disruption as possible to the hotel's guests. The hotel remained open during the entire 21,000 square foot reroofing job of the hotel's west wing.
As a result, Frederick Baruth of Weathercraft Roofing, consulted with Rich Ramirez and Sue Girard of Johns Manville, the manufacturer of the roofing membrane and collectively they selected a Johns Manville APP modified bitumen roofing system.
"We considered a number of different roofing systems," said Frederick Baruth. "The hotel had to remain open at all times so we ruled out asphalt because of the fumes. We considered mechanically fastened EPDM, but on the concrete deck, this would have required massive hammer drilling. We selected the modified bitumen system because it was the least disruptive to guests. It must have been a good choice because we didn't have one complaint during the entire 60-day roofing process," he concluded.
Appearance was another consideration and so every detail had to be flawless. Guests looking out of the windows could see part of the roof and therefore a smooth surface membrane with a granular surface applied in cold adhesive was selected. The colored granular surface was chosen to match the clay-tiled pitch roofs.
After the previous membrane had been removed from all five sections of the roof, 1/2-inch DuraBoard™ insulation was applied. DuraBoard worked particularly well for this application because the membrane could be directly heat-welded to the insulation without an additional base sheet. The two plies of APPeX™ 4S modified bitumen sheet were heat welded to the insulation followed by the red granule surfacing.
In addition to the challenge of installing the roof while the hotel was open, the twelve-person crew also had to deal with access issues. There was no direct access to any of the roofs so the crew had to use a boom and crane to both remove the old roof and install the new one. This presented additional safety challenges for Andrew Madena, the foreman on the job and Tom Baruth, the general superintendent.
"This was a tough job with exceptional performance criteria and difficult access," said Frederick Baruth. "Fortunately, with the combination of our 18-years of experience and the technical support from Johns Manville, we were able to provide the client with an excellent roofing system that met their demanding criteria," he concluded.
Johns Manville is a leading manufacturer and marketer of premium-quality building products. The 142-year-old Denver-based company had sales of $2.2 billion in 1999. Johns Manville employs approximately 9,700 people and operates 55 manufacturing facilities in North America, Europe and China. Additional information can be found at
www.jm.com.
