What about Pitch Pockets on a Flat Roof?
What is a Pitch Pocket?
Pitch Pockets are open bottom containers installed on flat roofs to allow conduit pipes, electrical wires air conditioner cooling lines to be pulled through a roof. Once these elements are snaked through the container, then tar is used to fill the container to seal around all the wires and pipes.
Pitch Pocket Maintenance
It is important to check older Pitch Pockets once a year and top them off with fresh tar. The tar that is used in Pitch Pockets will shrink and crack. This leads to a hollow Pitch Pocket that can collect water and leak.
An overlooked cause of roof leaks are Pitch Pockets
Notice in the image above how the pipe insulation has broken off. The seal around the pipe is now compromised and causing leaks.
Pitch Pockets can have different types of filling. More modern ones have a silicone fill instead of tar.
Five Tips on maintaining Pitch Pockets
- Check whether the roof is flashed properly
- Make sure that old cut pipelines are properly capped off
- Check the pitch-pocket and see if it is full to the brim with tar. Many times this tar will dry and shrink and cause a low spot in the container. When it rains, this low spot will collect water, and water will eventually leak through where the wires and pipelines are.
- Check the foam insulation that covers the pipelines. This foam deteriorates and causes openings where water can leak through the Pitch-Pocket.
- As a precautionary step, fill pitch pockets yearly.
- Flat Roof Repairs can easily relate to a Pitch-Pocket that has wires and pipes going through it, and all you need to do is make sure the insulation foam around the pipes is not the cause of the leak.
Very often a roof leak can be fixed by simply topping off the pitch pockets on a roof. This is a very common problem on commercial flat roofs.
