Laundry Care Express started in 2003 purely to help people with their laundry. For busy families, people who travel frequently, or really anyone who wants some extra time saved, it can always be helpful to have some help with your laundry.
But pretty quickly after launching their residential service, Laundry Care Express began hearing from local businesses in the Silicon Valley and Santa Cruz region of California. Businesses needed help with their laundry, and they thought Laundry Care Express would be the ones to provide that assistance.
So, the company grew and expanded to take on these local businesses as clients. Now Laundry Care Express has matured into a full-service business, and, true to its Silicon Valley roots, it uses the power of the internet to run its business. You can schedule a pickup, leave your laundry, dry cleaning, and dress shirts on your doorstep, and then like magic, it comes back clean the next day.
This business has led to a tagline, “Picking up laundry... delivering freedom.” When you’re able to remove the recurring task of laundry and regularly going to your local dry cleaning business, it really delivers freedom.
But that was 20 years ago, and the Laundry Care Express’s facility had fallen into some wear and tear issues. There were minor leaks that needed to be repaired, and a coated spray polyurethane foam (SPF) roof installation was the solution on the built-up roof.
Getting the Job
To tackle this job, Laundry Care Express turned to Foam Roof Solutions, which services the Sacramento and Bay areas. They connected the contractor Advanced Foam Roofing Inc. with the job.
Alex Jimenez is the owner, main contractor, and applicator for Advanced Foam Roofing. He is a Spray Polyurethane Foam Alliance (SPFA) certified master sprayer and has been applying foam roofing systems for more than 25 years. Jimenez has spray applied more than 1 million square feet (92,903 m2) of SPF roofing, both commercial and residential.
Gus Hunt, the principal CEO of Foam Roof Solutions, said his part of the job is to consult, market, and help find leads for companies including Advanced Foam Roofing.
“We are a co-op marketing consulting company that specifically develops leads and sales for spray foam roofing companies,” Hunt said. “So in this case, it was, again, Alex, that we turned this job over to. So that’s how the lead came in. I sold the job basically with the online tools, measurements, that type of thing. And then Alex goes out and confirms everything that we talked about and the price, and then we started the job.”
Hunt said he received the lead around February. “And then I think we started the job probably in late July,” he said.
In total, the job took 10 days and a crew of seven people to cover the 6,000 square feet (557.4 m2) on the company’s roof. That was all seven people who work for Advanced Foam Roofing.
One topic of discussion was the rooftop solar. “We had to coordinate with the solar company,” Hunt said. “So essentially, [we] went in and did the prep for this job. And then the solar company came in and put in the stanchions for the racking system in flat roofs. So the stanchions needed to be installed, and then once those were installed, we came in and prepped all the stanchions.”
There were no Title 24 requirements, meaning California’s business energy efficiency standards, so there was no additional foam required, Hunt said. The only state requirement was that the state of California requires a low emissions hydrofluoroolefin (HFO) SPF.
Coated Spray Foam System
The crew started by working to remove gravel from the existing roof and dispose of it all. Next, they applied a GC Ultra-Bond10 primer at a thickness of 33 gallons per 100 square feet (125 L/9.3 m2).
All the work was prepared per manufacturer specifications, Hunt said, which was General Coatings on this project. Then it was time for the SPF, also called spray foam. They applied 1.5 inches (3.8 cm) of UltraThane 230 HFO 2.7-pound (1.2 kg) SPF. They followed that up with UltraFlex 1000 acrylic coating, which they applied at 40 pounds per 100 square feet (18.1 kg/9.3 m2). The crew broadcast roofing granules in the wet topcoat.
The work was done with a BOSS SFE 6/12K Proportioner, supplied by Spray Foam Equipment & Manufacturing, and a Graco Fusion gun.
“We used our standard thickness of 1.5 inches of high density 2.7-pound foam, then two coats of coating, a gray basecoat, and a white topcoat,” Hunt said. “And then we have 40 pounds of granules per 100 square feet in the wet topcoat as just a walk protector. Typically, granules are required by the manufacturer. This is a 15-year, no-leak warranty.”
In addition, there was a parapet wall around the perimeter, Hunt said, “which we foamed to the top of, and we used General Coatings primer at 33 gallons per 100 square feet [125 L/9.3 m2].”
The team also replaced the drains; removed a dead heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) unit; and replaced eight large skylights.
Straightforward Application
No fall protection was required, Hunt said. That’s due to the parapet walls. The crew was sure to wear standard personal protective equipment (PPE) though. That included a respirator, which was used during spray application. All other safety requirements were followed, too.
The weather was California perfect, with sunny and warm temperatures and no wind, Hunt said. However, the solar panels did cause a complication.
“The biggest challenge was having over 400 stanchions to mask and then unmask once the roof was finished,” he said. “That’s a lot of stanchions. I think that was the biggest challenge. It was in the middle of summer, so there really wasn’t any rain or wind or any issues that way. So, yeah, it was a pretty straightforward application. With the exception of that many stanchions, I don't think we'd actually worked with a roof with that many before.”
Hunt said the team is used to dealing with solar systems in general. “We’ve done a lot of solar as it is, just not that many,” he said. “So really the challenge was the amount of stanchions that we had to mask and prep and then undo after we finished the roof. So it was really more about the quantity of those stanchions. That was the biggest challenge.” Hunt said the small parapet wall did not pose a big issue. “We sprayed to the top, and I don’t believe there were any windy days where we lost time with wind,” he said.
The solar panels were a bit of a surprise, said Jiminez.
“So about a month and a half before we were scheduled to do the project, they started talking about solar,” he said. “So between then and then, they were added in, so we had plenty of time. I guess you could say that we were warned about it, but it’s just when we first sold the job, they weren’t in there. So that probably added maybe a day, two days to our project, because just all the extra extensions, you have to mask [them], you have to prime [them], special primer. And then after you’re done, you spray the foam, and then you have to trim them for the basecoat and [that] just creates a lot of extra work. And I can do 30, 40, maybe even 100. But when you’ve got almost 500, it's just really time consuming.”
Leader in Spray Foam
Hunt said doing work like this job secures Advanced Foam Roofing’s position as a leading provider to commercial businesses. “A lot of commercial buildings, in addition to this job, really just adds to our positive background in regard to people trusting us to do their commercial work,” he said. “I know the owner has been very pleased with our work. So as far as this job is concerned, it’s another feather in our cap in regard to the type of job with that many solar stanchions and knowing that foam and solar.”
Hunt said since he started his company, one of his goals has been to educate customers on how well spray foam and solar integrate because of their seamless qualities.
“And so when you have that many stanchions, you still have to think about drainage,” he said. “You still have to think about once the solar panel goes on, where’s that water going to go? Because we’re never going to see it again. And that may be in your challenge category as well, as far as Alex is concerned, being able to spray the foam so that the drainage was proper to those scuppers that we replaced. And that when they put the solar panels up there, there’s not just big pools of standing water underneath the panels and that there’s good drainage.”
But, Hunt said, Jiminez and his team are up to that challenge.
“With that many stanchions, one of the challenges that Alex is very good at overcoming when it comes to spraying SPF is he’s just one of the best there is, and he knows how to make that work so that we don't have a lot of standing water on the roof when he finishes,” Hunt said.
Editor’s note: This article first appeared in the January 2024 print issue of CoatingsPro Magazine. Reprinted with permission.