How sensors can be used for flat roofs to detect water leakages early and localize them to save both money and time
The municipality of Copenhagen had a school project where they had to make use of the roof as much as possible. This led to a project with 4 roof surfaces on different levels with different type of use; outside kitchen, climbing structures for the kids, green gardens, solar cells, etc. The building owner had previously had issues with water finding it's way in through the roof and knew it would be expensive if that happened on this project. The building owner had a clear problem statement going into the collaboration with Woodsense:
"It's not if water comes in through the roof, it's about when" - Mads Alleslev, Byggeri København
The challenge with flat roofs is that it's almost impossible to avoid cracks where water can find it's way in. And when it comes through the membrane and into the building, then the water can fall down in a completely different place, meaning that localising the point of error always becomes very costly.
With a highly used roof surface, localising the damage only becomes more costly as it means removing the green roof or solar panels before looking into the isolation to find where the water comes from.
In general, the later the damage is discovered, the more difficult it will be to localise and the more widespread is the damage, meaning the reparation will be up to a 100x more expensive than if you had found the damage within a few days.
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The municipality of Copenhagen was introduced to Woodsense through COWI who believed the sensors could be the solution needed for this challenge.
The solution was intended to help detect damages in the maintenance phase, as the building was protected by a big scaffold cover. However, during the construction phase, rain penetrated the cover and found its way into the roof through an assembled that hadn't been closed properly in the roof. This helped the contractor, NCC, to understand where water had entered into the roof and to determine whether drying out of the roof was needed.
The sensors will in the future help in determining whether the roof has been done correctly and help detect and localise damages early in case water comes in during the maintenance phase.
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