MINIMIZE FOOT TRAFFIC WHENEVER POSSIBLE
There are many companies and property managers who treat their roof as if it’s just another floor on their building. They like to store extra inventory, tools, equipment, and anything they can think of on top of their roof. They like to hold meetings up there if it’s a nice day. They like to get on the roof and just chat. If they have a building on which that they can easily access the roof, they’re pretty likely to overuse it. This overuse wouldn’t be a major problem if the items they were storing were simply resting on the roof, or if they themselves were just standing on the roof, but the items are often moved around and can be extremely heavy, and the people on the roof are walking around, not standing. All of this excessive traffic can lead to premature roof damage.
Storage Leads to Accessing Stored Items
Once items have been stored on your roof, you’ll have to go access them. Once you start accessing them, you’ll have to walk all over the surface of your roof. This foot traffic can damage the surface as you drag your feet, stumble, and walk all over the surface of the roof. The foot traffic on your roof is what damages it, not your items that are stored on the roof. So whether you’re storing items on your roof or accessing it for some other reason, try to minimize the amount of time you spend walking around. And when you do go retrieve your items from storage, you need to make sure you aren’t dragging or sliding the items, but carrying them.
Journey of a Thousand Steps
Many people don’t think that walking on their roof can do much damage, because they think that it’s just a few steps, they only weigh 200 pounds how could they damage the roof? Well, no single step, or even a single trip up on the roof can really damage it by itself. But over the course of 5 or 10 years, walking on your roof every couple months can really wear down the roof surface and lead to unnecessary repairs and the roof requiring replacement earlier than it should. Do you want to replace your roof sooner than you have to? No, no one does. So minimizing the amount you walk on it is a good way to ensure your roof lasts a long time.
Conclusion
Whatever the reason is for you walking on your roof, try to minimize how many steps you are taking and try to minimize the number of trips you make up on the roof. No single walk will damage your roof, but many walks over the course of time can destroy your roof.
