When the Rockland County Sheriff’s Department decided to replace an aging metal roofing system on its 31-year-old headquarters, county facilities management decided to install a standing seam metal retrofit roofing system over the old roof.
The old standing seam factory painted aluminum roof from the original construction was failing,” explained Jan Degenshein, the Nyack, New York architect responsible for the reroof design. “There were leaks at seams, fascias and flashings. The skylights were also clouded and leaking. Besides water, ice and snow, birds were finding their way into the building and nesting in the rafters. It was clear that the roof was in such bad condition that it couldn't be patched. It required a complete replacement. Or some secure, lasting means of overlay,” the architect observed.
Because the on-going work in the Sheriff's Department could not be interrupted, and because a replacement roof would require a somewhat unreliable and costly "tent" structure to weather protect the occupants below, it became evident that an overlay roof would be the best solution, Degenshein explained.
The county approved an Englert Series 2500, two-inch, 24 gauge, mechanical seamed, double lock roof with 16” wide panels in Dark Bronze. The new 12,000 square foot dark bronze roof was installed late in 2014 over the original metal roof of the structure built in 1983 using a Roof Hugger retrofit roofing system employing Z-Bars. By installing the retrofit system, the sheriff’s office was able to avoid the high cost of removing the old roof and any departmental interruption while sidestepping any possible weather damage that could have occurred during a roof removal. “After weighing the benefits and drawbacks of different roofing systems, the Englert retrofit system was chosen because of cost considerations, its weather tightness, appearance true to the original architecture, minimum dead weight contribution, least disruption to on-going activities within the building, and ease of installation,” The Nyack architect pointed out .
The County’s facility management engineers were also able to maintain the integrity of the original design loads of the building while adding the new roof and used a thermal break air space between the old and new roof panels to add additional insulation to upgrade the structure’s heating and cooling capacities particularly in several high ceiling areas inside the building.
The county also installed a new commercial gutter system around the building and a snow rail system to inhibit snow from avalanching off the roof and causing damage to landscape, gutters, adjacent roofs and vehicles, and harming passers-by. The county then commissioned the installation of additional snowguards on the standing seam metal roof for extra protection earlier this year after one of the worst winters in modern times dumped more than 54 inches of snow on the New York metropolitan area in late 2014 and early 2015.
The dark bronze roof complements one of the aesthetic aspects of the building—a life-sized stainless steel and brass sculpture on the side of the building silhouetting several human figures in a work titled “The Community” by noted sculptor Jim Collins. The sculpture represents a unique dimension in metal construction to a building and was made possible by the Art in Public Places program of Rockland County, New York.
The roofing contractor for the Rockland County Sheriff Building installation was B&B Sheet Metal of Long Island City, New York. The architect was Jan Degenshein of Degenshein Architects in Nyack, New York. The general contractor was HVB Construction, Inc. of Harriman, New York.