Ponding water is generally no match for the coating applied to your roof, especially when a silicone coating is used on your flat roof. Silicone forms a monolithic membrane that can resist ponding water better than any other coating. Silicone coatings will maintain their adhesion and remain leak-free even when under the pressure of ponding water. There are very few other coatings that can say the same. Also, because silicone coatings are specially formulated to be non-sacrificial, they don’t chalk away over time. Rather than slowly deteriorating and becoming useless, coatings pretty much stay in the same form after installation. Another benefit of silicone is that they are resistant to UV exposure and reflect a large majority of the sun’s heat and light, cooling your structure and lowering your cooling cost and wear and tear on your cooling equipment.
Generally, positively sloped roofs with inclines greater than 1/12 are excellent candidates for acrylic or elastomeric coatings. Roofs with a positive slope and proper drainage that do not have areas where water ponds can benefit from these types of systems. Silicone is still utilized in areas of high-water traffic and possible ponding. Acrylic systems are not recommended to be used on flat sloped roofs or roofs that are highly susceptible to ponding since elastomeric is likely to swell and blister, causing water intrusion underneath the coating, leading to potential leaks in the roofing system and coating delamination. We create and design a custom coating solution for each of our customers that are in need of this type of system. An elastomeric system involves reinforcing fabric between multiple layers of Acrylic coating and applying an additional silicone coating on and around areas of ponding water and high rain traffic such as scuppers and around roof penetrations.