Recently had a new standing seam metal roof installed. Roofers could talk the talk but I was not impressed with the quality of work overall. My main complaint is that they installed the roof so that most of the sewer vents go right through the middle of a seam. The boots are clearly not designed to accommodate this and they’ve succeeded in creating more work for me in the future; which is what I was trying to to avoid by spending the extra money to upgrade to metal. The boots are going to leak. In fact, they already have.
I was pretty pissed about this initially and told the owner of the roofing company that if they had bothered to tell me this was going to happen, I would have moved the damned vent pipes myself if they weren’t going to. The right fix would be to replace the panels and move the vent pipes but I have a feeling getting them to do that is going to be difficult if not impossible.
Is there a boot that’s designed for this kind of install or a better way of sealing these? Or, am I going to be stuck checking and resealing them every couple of years?
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That is the right boot for that job. That said, the install is not the most attractive I’ve seen.
If you want to put another boot on top of that, look for “ag panel roof boot” on Google. There are some larger boots that could sit on top of that thing.
If those are the right boots, what do you do differently to keep them from leaking?
The flange they adapted was done pretty badly so it isn’t making as even contact as would be ideal. Looks like they tried to use sealant to make up for it and didn’t use enough, so it still had gaps.
If it were my circus, I’d use butyl sheet under the boot for more expansion/contraction tolerant waterproofing and take the extra time to do a better job on that flange.
You could go ham with some roof patch and be done with it for a decade and do it better when it needs redoing.
The sealant is supposed to be that way. You’re supposed to bend the aluminum to the match the roof, put a bead of caulk under the boot, put screws at the major fold lines, and put a bead of caulk around the edge for extra protection.
I don’t know if the installer put the first bead on, but the screws are basically in the right places and the that finishing bead is there.
The problem might be because the installer installed this at a 45 degree angle. That’s not something I normally see. That forces the big bend to be on a corner.
I usually see these at that angle, supposedly so it sheds water to either side instead of damming it by being horizontal. Metal roofs are pretty common in rural areas, and the boots are done like this.
Honestly, this doesn’t look bad.
I’d probably start by looking
For something like this, if probably hit up YouTube and search metal roof + roof boot or pipe flashing
Two potential options.
Option 1. More caulk. It’s possible that the roofer did put caulk under the boot. Perhaps they only put calk on the perimeter. https://youtu.be/eidzG74VT5U
Option 2, put another panel on top of it and create a big ass shingle. https://youtu.be/mwOdoaX0ZXw
And that said, when I’ve had problems with flashing and my roof, the best thing to do is to get into the attic while someone pours water in specific areas. That’s the fastest way to know what specifically needs to be fixed.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/eidzG74VT5U
https://piped.video/mwOdoaX0ZXw
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
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I’m not a roofer, but I’d have the vents installed the correct way. Even if it was sealed well the whole setup looks sloppy and prone to leaks. Show the boss or forman of the roofing company the pictures of the work you dont like and see if they’ll fix it. If not you could look up your local laws, the roofer may have to make this right. If they do then document the work and make sure it’s good. Either way I’d fix it, you don’t fuck with your roof.
Unrelated to your concerns, I would suggest a screen or plumbing vent cap to keep rodents from dropping in through the vent. Most don’t realize that this is a thing that happens.
Really, this looks fine. I’ve seen a pile of metal roof in rural ag areas, and this is the right boot, done the right way. Yah, if they’d thought ahead they might have been able to schedule the sheets to not land on the seem. But putting the boot at 45* and screwing them on either side of the seam is correct, though that bottom one is squonky, but it’s at the bottom so it shouldn’t be an issue. Proper caulking under and around. This is probably as good as it gets.
Not sure why no one sees this, so maybe I’m wrong, but the seam on standing seam is not sealed, just snapped together, so water will simply flow into/under the top of this boot no matter how well sealed it is. OP started it’s already leaking, and of course it is, there is no way to seal this properly. I put the same boots on my roof and made sure they didn’t span a seam, works great. OP your roofer doesn’t understand the fundamentals of standing seam. You are correct you probably need to replace both whole panels and relocate the vent or get a metal roof specific vent flashing.
