Landscaping and Condenser Protection on a Reroof

Purpose

Plants and the outdoor mechanical unit are the two things on a reroof site a tarp does not save. A shrub under a laid tarp takes the whole debris load through the fabric, plastic in full sun cooks foliage in an afternoon, and a condenser covered while it runs rejects heat into its own cover. This procedure makes protection framed and ventilated, and makes the outdoor unit something isolated before it is covered and verified running before the crew leaves.

Scope

Covers protection and restoration of soft landscape, planting beds, trees and the outdoor condensing unit on residential and light commercial reroofs.

Does not cover ground, wall, glass or interior protection, owned by the property protection SOP, or the container and drive, owned by the dumpster placement SOP. Does not cover work inside the unit's electrical compartment or refrigerant circuit, which is a licensed HVAC contractor's. Does not cover replanting or turf repair.

Roles and responsibilities

Why draping is the damage

A tarp laid on a shrub does not carry the debris, the shrub does. Sheet goods weigh little empty and a great deal loaded with tear-off, and the branch that snaps is the one under the pile. So protection over anything living is a frame - a panel carried on stakes, sawhorses or a lean-to rail - standing clear of the crown with open sides.

Two clocks run while that frame sits there. Plastic over foliage in direct sun builds heat fast, so a plant under solid cover through a hot day comes out scorched even if nothing landed on it. And the root zone is injured by what stands on it rather than by what falls, so staged bundles, a wheelbarrow track and boots inside a tree's drip line all count.

The condenser fails a third way. Its whole job is moving air across a coil, so anything wrapped around it while it runs pushes head pressure up until it trips or the compressor is damaged, and granules blown into the fins do the same thing slowly. The unit is stopped and isolated first, covered from above with airflow left at the sides, then restarted and watched before anyone leaves.

Procedure

1. Inventory the landscape and equipment, and settle what cannot be protected. Walk the property with the customer, photograph every bed, specimen plant, tree inside the protection line, trellis, pot and the outdoor unit, and mark each protect in place, move, or not protectable. Acceptance: a marked list with a photograph per item and the customer's written decision on everything marked not protectable. Wrong looks like a verbal "we will be careful", the sentence a snapped specimen branch gets measured against. Stop rule: an item the customer will not move and the crew cannot frame is escalated to the salesperson before the crew starts. Hazard: walking beds finds the sprinkler heads, the low-voltage lighting and the dog, and nobody reaches into an unlit bed by hand.

2. Stop and isolate the condensing unit before anything covers it. Set the system off at the thermostat, wait for the fan and compressor to stop, then open the outdoor disconnect - a pull-out or switch, by hand, no tools - and tape and label it with the date and crew lead's name. Acceptance: fan and compressor confirmed stopped by sight and sound, disconnect open and labelled, and the customer told the cooling is off and for how long. Wrong looks like a tarp thrown over a running unit. Stop rule: if nobody can identify the disconnect, or it was wired direct with no means of opening it, the unit is NOT covered - set a standoff barrier instead and book the HVAC contractor. Hazard: the unit runs on high voltage and its capacitor holds a charge after power is removed, so nobody on a roofing crew opens its electrical compartment; that is a qualified person's work under 29 CFR 1910.333(b)(2), and a roofer's job stops at the disconnect handle.

3. Frame protection over plantings rather than laying it on them. Set stakes, sawhorses or a lean-to rail clear of the crown, span a rigid panel across, and leave the sides open so air moves through. Acceptance: no cover touching foliage anywhere, a measured clearance above each crown, sides open, and the frame stable enough to take a shovel of debris without moving. Wrong looks like sheet goods pegged straight over a boxwood, which crushes it as reliably as the debris would. Stop rule: a crown too tall or a span too wide for anything on the truck is not covered anyway - it goes back to step 1's written decision or gets its limbs tied back by agreement. Hazard: driving stakes is ground disturbance, so irrigation and low-voltage runs are located first, and stakes near a walk are flagged.

4. Cover the isolated unit from above, with the sides left open. Set a rigid panel on standoffs over the top of the unit so it sheds debris clear of the cabinet, and never wrap the coil faces. Acceptance: panel clear of the fan guard, no material touching any coil face, sides open, and the disconnect still open and labelled underneath. Wrong looks like a tarp bungeed around all four sides, the arrangement that ruins a compressor if the disconnect is ever closed by somebody helpful. Stop rule: debris found inside the fan guard or packed into the fins is not blown or hosed out by the crew, it goes to the HVAC contractor on the shop's account. Hazard: the lineset to the wall is soft copper and is never stood on, leaned on or cut - a holed line vents refrigerant that displaces air low near the ground and freezes on contact, so if one is opened everyone moves upwind, nobody enters a crawl space or basement downwind, and the contractor and customer are called immediately.

5. Keep traffic and staging off root zones and turf. Lay a plywood tracking path from the drive to each work face, keep bundles, buckets, wheelbarrows and the container off beds and off the ground inside a tree's drip line, and hold the crew to the path. Acceptance: one defined path per work face, no staged material on a bed or inside a drip line, path photographed. Wrong looks like a shortcut across the lawn that is a rut by the second day. Stop rule: a path that has started rutting is re-laid on fresh sheets before the next load crosses. Hazard: sheet goods on wet turf slide underfoot, so paths are pinned at the ends and two people carry any sheet that catches wind.

6. Deal with limbs over the roof before the ladders go up, and never near a line. Agree any pruning in writing with the customer before the job, and cut only what a ground crew can reach clear of everything overhead. Acceptance: a written pruning agreement naming which limbs, plus confirmed clearance from every overhead conductor before a pole or saw is raised. Wrong looks like a crew trimming what is in the way and learning afterward it was the customer's favorite tree. Stop rule: any limb touching, crossing or within reach of a service drop is not cut by a roofing crew at all - that is a utility or line-clearance arborist call. Hazard: a limb springs and swings as it releases, so nobody stands under the cut, the drop area is coned, and a chainsaw on a ladder is not a roofing crew's tool.

7. Shut down irrigation, and protect water features. Turn the controller off for the duration and write down the setting you found, flag every head inside the working area, and cover any pool, pond or water feature under a work face with a supported cover. Acceptance: controller off with the previous schedule recorded, heads flagged and counted, water features covered with no cover resting on the surface. Wrong looks like a zone firing at 5 am under a stack of underlayment. Stop rule: a pool that cannot be covered means the work face above it gets a catch frame or the granules and offcuts stop there. Hazard: nobody works on or leans over a pool cover, and the crew adds no chemical to a pool and no product to a lawn to fix what fell in - product label directions are legally binding and that is the applicator's call.

8. Restore, restart the unit, and watch it run before anyone leaves. Remove every frame and cover, clear granules off foliage and hardscape with water or a soft brush, put the irrigation controller back to the setting recorded in step 7, then close the condenser disconnect, remove the label, and call for cooling at the thermostat. Acceptance: outdoor fan turning, compressor running, no breaker trip over a continuous 10 minutes, no debris in the fan guard or fins, the customer confirming cold air at a register, and every frame counted off site. Wrong looks like a disconnect closed on the way to the truck with nobody watching. Stop rule: if the unit does not start, hums, trips or runs loud, the crew does not troubleshoot it - power goes back off at the disconnect and the HVAC contractor is booked the same day on the shop's account. Hazard: closing a disconnect puts high voltage and a starting motor back into service, so stand to the side of the box rather than square in front of it, keep hands and tools off the cabinet while it starts, and keep everyone back through the 10 minutes.

The record this produces

One landscape and equipment sheet: address, date, crew lead, the item inventory with each disposition and the customer's written decision on anything not protectable, frame clearances, tracking path locations, the pruning agreement, the irrigation setting found and restored, the disconnect open and close times with who labelled it, and the restart result with the 10 minute watch noted. Photographs attach per item. The office reads the restart line before releasing the job.

Worked pass: 12 ft eave, condenser on the east wall, specimen maple at the front

Protection line from the property protection SOP is the greater of 10 ft past the drip line and the eave height, so 12 ft on the east and front elevations. Three boxwoods and the condenser sit inside it, the condenser 4 ft off the foundation with its lineset entering the wall behind.

Step 2 passed. The disconnect was a pull-out on the wall beside the unit, opened by hand at 8:05, taped and labelled, with fan and compressor confirmed stopped first and the customer told cooling was off until late afternoon.

Step 3 fails on the maple. Crown height measured 7 ft and crown spread 9 ft, so a frame clear of the crown has to stand above 7 ft and span 9 ft, and nothing on the truck spans 9 ft unsupported at that height without a leg inside the drip line. The stop rule fires and the crew does not lay a tarp on it. Step 1's written decision is pulled up: the customer had agreed to limb tie-back rather than removal, so the outer limbs were tied off the wall and the bed under the maple frame-covered at 3 ft over the low planting only, with the maple's exposure recorded as a disclosed condition.

The boxwoods took frames at 2 ft clearance with open sides, off at the end of each day. Step 8 restored the controller to the Tuesday and Friday schedule recorded that morning, and the disconnect closed at 4:40 pm. The fan turned, the compressor started, the breaker held a continuous 10 minutes, and the customer confirmed cold air at the hall register before the crew left. Isolation ran 8 hours 35 minutes.

References

• 29 CFR 1910.333(b)(2), work practices on energized electrical equipment and the qualified-person requirement, which is why a roofing crew stops at the disconnect handle.
• The condensing unit manufacturer's service literature for disconnect location, clearance around the coil, and coil cleaning, which belongs to an HVAC contractor.
• Your state applicator licensing rules and the product label, which is legally binding on anything applied to a lawn or a pool.
• See related: roofing-property-protection-before-a-tear-off and roofing-material-delivery-and-rooftop-loading.