Roof drainage fixes and cricket installation in Phoenix

Flat roofs in Phoenix are supposed to slope gently toward scuppers or drains, but many were framed with very little fall, and decks sag over the decades. Add a parapet on every side, a cooler curb in the middle and an AC unit or two, and water has a lot of obstacles to work around. Most of the year that doesn't matter. Then a monsoon cell drops a big share of the summer's rain in under an hour, and every flaw in the slope fills at once.

Ponding isn't just cosmetic. Standing water concentrates sun on the coating, adds weight to the deck, and finds any seam or crack sitting under it. Dust from haboobs settles in the wet areas and turns to mud that holds moisture even longer. Over a few seasons, the low spots become the first places to leak. If water is already coming through the ceiling, our flat roof leak repairs handle the damage while we sort out the slope that caused it.

A cricket, sometimes called a saddle, is a small peaked ridge built on the high side of whatever blocks the water. Behind a chimney on a sloped roof, it pushes water off to both sides instead of letting it pool against the masonry. On flat roofs, we build them behind cooler curbs, AC stands, skylight curbs and long runs of parapet wall, and between two scuppers so water has a clear line to each. The ridge and slopes are sized to the obstacle and to the roof area draining toward it.

On wood-framed sloped roofs, crickets are usually framed with lumber, decked, then covered with the same roofing as the field so they're part of the system. On flat roofs, they're more often cut from tapered insulation board or built up with sprayed foam. Every cricket needs flashing where it meets the wall, chimney or curb, since that joint is the first place water reaches. We see plenty of crickets built without it, which just moves the leak a few feet over.

Where ponding covers a wide area, a cricket alone won't solve it. Tapered insulation is rigid board manufactured with a built-in slope and laid out in a planned pattern so the whole roof falls toward its drains, then covered with new membrane. On foam roofs, we build slope by spraying extra foam in the low areas, since foam goes on in layers and can be shaped across the surface. Both approaches add some height, so we check that parapet flashing, door thresholds and scupper liners will still sit right.

Moving water to the edge only works if it can get out. Many older homes have one or two small scuppers for a large roof, or canales narrowed inside by rust and debris. We enlarge undersized scuppers, add new ones at low corners, and fit an overflow scupper set slightly higher than the main one as a backup for the biggest storms. Openings that are rusted or leaking go through our scupper and canale repair work so the whole drainage path is sound.

Adding slope to a roof near the end of its life can mean paying twice. If the membrane or foam is worn across the whole surface, building crickets and tapered areas on top of it buries tired material under new work. In that case we usually suggest folding the drainage design into a full flat roof replacement, where the tapered system goes down over the bare deck and every scupper is set to the new surface height from the start.

When the roof still has years left, targeted drainage work makes a lot of sense. A single cricket behind a cooler curb, or one new scupper at a low corner, can end a ponding problem that has been eating through coatings for years. After looking at the roof, we'll tell you which situation you're in and why, so you can decide based on what's actually up there rather than on a guess.