Using Tide to Kill Roof Moss is a Bad Idea. Some B.C. Condo Owners Learned that The Hard Way.

In an effort to curb moss on the rooftops, a contractor sprinkled them with Tide; the result was green spaces overrun with suds

Three women watched from adjacent balconies as five boom lifts lined up along a lane hoisted some of the workers to the pitched, two-storey roofs; other crew members walked through the picket-fenced yards of the complex, which is tucked into the verdant side of Sumas Mountain. From there, they climbed ladders and gently hosed down the rooftops with water. A vacuum truck intercepted the resulting runoff before it drained into a nearby forest.

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The onlooking residents were in no mood to chat, though one volunteered a crisp response when asked how she was feeling about the cleanup: “S–tty.”

Then, as it does about 174 days a year in Abbotsford, it rained, washing the detergent off the roofs, sluicing it down lanes and through three culverts that slope toward the forest and feed into nearby Clayburn Creek.

Soap on the rooftops of an Abbotsford housing complex

“I was quite shocked and concerned,” Ulanowski told CBC. He worried some chemicals in Tide could harm aquatic life in Clayburn. The creek is a spawning area for coho salmon, cutthroat trout and several other fish species. There were reports of a video showing fish swimming through foam.

According to a 2010 sensitive ecosystems study by the city of Abbotsford, Sumas Mountain is a 6,600-hectare “biological hot spot” inhabited by at least 40 species at risk, including the Pacific giant salamander and the coastal tailed frog.

But take a quick look around the internet and you’ll find people living in coastal areas like Oregon and other parts of B.C. pushing the notion that Tide is a cheap, effective way to deal with rooftop moss. It does kill moss. But many professional roofers advise against the practice, warning not only of the environmental hazard but also that it’s bad for roofing materials.

Troy Ferreira, the CRCA’s technical director, says that, while moss roots can penetrate, lift and damage wooden shakes and ordinary asphalt shingles, detergents can do worse in a shorter period of time. The surfactants in many of them—degreasers that help get the spilled mustard and oily stains out of your clothes—also attack the oils in asphalt shingles, loosening the granules in them. And if the granules come off, says Ferreira, “those shingles are going to fail prematurely.”

Tysowski has heard of individual homeowners using detergent, but never on the “unbelievable” scale seen in Abbotsford. He regards moss as mostly an aesthetic problem, adding there are environmentally safe products available to kill it, such as Scotts EcoSense Moss B Gon. In most cases, he says, gently scraping or sweeping it from between shingles is the safest remedy.

But Tony Gioventu, executive director of the Condominium Home Owners Association of B.C. (CHOA), notes that, under B.C. law, the individual owners of condos, townhomes or apartments in each strata are collectively responsible—and liable— for anything the strata and its council do.

And with 32,000 such strata corporations in the province, the stakes for residents are high. Gioventu, who for nearly 20 years has written a newspaper column called “Condo Smarts” that runs weekly in the Province and Victoria’s Times Colonist, says lessons from the Abbotsford fiasco will be one of his future topics.

Across Canada, he says, “we have a lot of individuals doing maintenance work and small construction jobs for condo and strata buildings out of the back of their trucks.” Many work without proper licences and permits, he says, and that exposes unit owners to financial risk arising from mistakes or shoddy work. Already the city of Abbotsford has slapped the Sage strata and contractor with a total of $2,000 in fines for contravening sewage and waterways bylaws. More penalties from other levels of government could be coming.

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