The Centre is a healthcare facility that serves as a residential-style home for patients with long-term disabilities (Photo 1). Built in the mid-1980s, the Centre was constructed of steel frame with metal stud infill walls, brick and stucco cladding, and metal roofing panels. From the beginning, the Centre has experienced serviceability issues with the weatherproofing of the building enclosure; roof leaks, flooding in crawl spaces, condensation, and moisture infiltration into the exterior wall systems created environmental conditions that were neither comfortable nor acceptable for immunocompromised patients. Over time, the building enclosure failures extended to nearly every area of the facility, exceeding what reactive maintenance could be performed by on-site staff. In 2010, Walter P Moore’s Diagnostics Group was brought in to perform an investigation into the causes of the failures and to propose permanent solutions to the pervasive leakage issues. Because the Centre is considered a critical care facility by the healthcare system and is typically operated at capacity due to demand, careful consideration for the needs of the patients had to be kept at the forefront of all investigation, and later for construction activities.
At the beginning of the investigation, the metal panel roofing system was singled out as a likely culprit for some of the more major leakage issues at the second level (Photo 2). Known problems with the integral gutters, skylights and valley flashings had been troubling the facility staff for a number of years. Repairs would be made, only for the same leaks to reoccur the next season. Ice damming was a major issue as well, causing damage to the roofing trim and gutters, and sliding sheets of ice that could potentially pose safety hazards when located over sidewalks and entries. Based on the findings of the investigation, while the roofing was not entirely to blame for the moisture infiltration issues—major points of leakage were identified throughout the exterior wall system as well. Certain details of the roofing system as constructed were directing bulk water to the building interior, causing damage to interior finishes and promoting biological growth within the wall system. Due to the severity of the conditions uncovered, the healthcare system agreed that wholesale replacement of the roofing and exterior wall systems was needed to properly correct the leakage issues. To minimize disruption to residents and to provide proper infection control during construction, the work was separated into several phases, starting with the roofing.