The “roof is failing” sensor in a house is typically a homeowner noticing a stain on a ceiling.
Wouldn’t it make more sense to put down sensor tape on the plywood roof deck before the peel-and-stick material, shingles, tiles, or whatever are applied? If there is a leak in the roofing system or flashing and water gets down to the wood layer there can be a notification of exactly where the leak is happening.
Even if mass-produced by our brothers, sisters, and binary-resisters in Asia this wouldn’t be cheap, but I still think it would make economic sense given the cost of a roof ($15,000-$150,000) and the cost of repairing water damage in a society where the average skill level falls each year.
It’s an obvious idea so why hasn’t it been done?
Related:
- patent filed in 2007
- patent filed in 2021 (maybe with a vision of commercial buildings?):
Surprised we made it through an entire installment of Israel vs Iran with no blog post about it. Typical day in the middle eastspun.
It is obvious and reasonable. Builders are not engineers, and I sense that they are very traditional, very sensitive to initial costs, and utterly unconcerned with longevity and maintainability, which are someone else’s problem.
I suspect that they would only do something like that if required by law / code.