Do you know why there were men on the roof?

Nick Fisk
Staff Writer

Many Hudson Valley students have seen workers on the roofs of several buildings across campus, from Lang to Amstuz, yet few know what they’re actually doing up there.

The company, an outside contractor brought to inspect many of the buildings on campus, has been asked to come in by the college’s administration. They use special tools to determine the stability of the roofs across campus.

Contractor David Blair was able to provide some detail about the whole process.

“It’s sort of a non-destructive test method [used] to determine the scope of the work,” Blair said.

Blair explained the tool they were using was a “Troxler 3216 Nuclear Moisture Gauge.”

“It basically locates and quantifies all the wet insulation, so that when a contractor comes in they know exactly where to go, and they can budget for it ahead of time,” he said.

The college’s Administration board started this project several years ago, under the title of “Roof Replacement Projects and Critical Facility Maintenance.” To date, the project is said to have roughly five million dollars put toward ensuring proper building stability.

Of course, with a name like Nuclear Moisture Gauge, some people raise concerns over the device’s safety. However, the workers reassure people that the devices are perfectly fine.

“They are incredibly safe devices,” Blair said. “[Although] they do have a small amount of radioactive material in them, it’s as much as [in] a smoke detector.”

The company has other means of detecting weak roofs with different scenarios. There’s a different way to scan the roofs at night using infrared cameras, and they mainly do this when the roofing isn’t stone, Blair said.

“It’s a snap at night,” Blair explained. “The stone is all hot, so the [infrared] camera can’t distinguish between wet and hot.”

The company has done 3 or 4 surveys at Hudson Valley in the past couple years. “It was Brahan, Fitzgibbons, we did Marvin and Cogan last year” Blair added.

The company also examined the McDonough Sports Complex last year as well.

When considering repairs and changes to infrastructure of the buildings, it’s worth considering the price of completely replacing a roof versus finding salvageable areas by calling in a company with these special tools.

For a company like this to come in, pricing could all depend on the building itself.

“It depends on how big it is [and] how hard it is to get to it,” the other worker explains, as taller, harder-to-reach roofing areas require special tools.

When it comes to roofing, “The rule was 10 to 12 bucks a square foot 10 years ago,” Blair said. “It’s probably $20 now, so on a 100 thousand square foot roof, if half the insulation is salvageable, that’s 50 thousand bucks you’ve saved them.”

The company is expected to do more work throughout the rest of the season as part of the project to ensure every building is as safe as can be for students and faculty.