Frank J. Lausche Building

Things Got Heavy

In addition to the challenge of putting on a unique inverted roof, this rooftop required 9,000 concrete pavers that weighed 80 pounds each to be placed on the rooftop. For those counting, that’s 720,000 pounds of concrete on the rooftop. Since a tow-motor can’t make its way to the rooftop, these pavers had to be moved with the help of some roofing carts. This was all done so that a swing stage the building owns for cleaning windows could be moved across the roof without causing damage.

This project truly was a team effort. This building had a ten-foot-wide sidewalk that went all around the perimeter. In order to move the debris from the roof and get supplies to the top of the building, a buck hoist was erected to the side of the building, in essence becoming a construction elevator. Just getting a permit to close the sidewalk around the bottom of the building was a process and took months. Pioneer Glazing helped to remove five giant glass windows from the side of the building to assist with building the buck hoist, and Forest City Erectors took care of building the buck hoist itself. Cleveland Building Restoration was called in to cut and demo the sidewalk, and then the overburden, which is mainly gravel and sand, was removed using carts and dump bins via the buck hoist. 

With the sidewalk removed, it was time to get in and remove the old rooftop membrane. The giant roof also had four smaller courtyards that had membranes to be removed. A Smith Roofing Hoist was used to remove debris from the lower roofs, and the debris had to be brought back up to the highest roof and then lowered through the buck hoist. The new membrane was a torch-applied SOPREMA roofing system. For most roofing systems, the insulation goes on the bottom and then the waterproofing layer goes on top. With this inverted system, the waterproofing layer went down first and then it was covered with the insulation. This was done to protect the waterproofing membrane from the weight of the pavers. There were three total roofing layers applied to the roof and then Blue Board Insulation and ballast were laid down to make way for the weight of the pavers.

And then came the heavy lifting. The pavers were meticulously cut and sprayed with a high-powered hose to remove excess silica dust. The unfortunate part of this for the Warren Crew was that this cold water rinse was performed on-site and outside in the harsh elements of a Cleveland winter. The temperatures were so cold that, at times, the water hoses would freeze up and would have to be thawed in order to continue. The pavers were moved to the roof four to six at a time and had to be put into place by hand because there really isn’t a machine that can handle this task.