Commercial
roof repair
the American Dream

Because on a flat roof, the water does not drop straight down. It gets through the membrane at one point, saturates the insulation underneath, and spreads sideways under the membrane until it finds an opening in the deck — which can be a long way from where it got in. That is also why the wet area under the membrane is usually far larger than the stain on the ceiling tile suggests. By the time it shows up inside, what started as a seam repair has often become a section tear-off with insulation replacement. We use moisture scanning to map the saturated area before quoting, so the scope is based on what is actually wet rather than on where the drip appeared.

If it is still there 48 hours after the rain stops, yes. That is the industry threshold for ponding, and past it, the water is adding structural load, ageing the membrane faster, and working at every marginal seam it touches. The useful part is that ponding is usually a symptom, not the disease. Most of the time it points to a clogged drain or scupper, a low spot from deck deflection, or slope that has shifted since the building settled. Clearing a drain costs almost nothing — if somebody is up there to see it. That is the whole argument for a maintenance interval on a commercial roof.

Isolated damage on an otherwise sound membrane is a repair — a properly welded patch, a reseal at a penetration, new flashing. The question is not the size of the hole; it is whether water has reached the insulation beneath it. Once insulation is saturated, patching over the top traps the water and the deck keeps deteriorating out of sight. That is when a section tear-off is the cheaper answer, even though it does not feel like it. TPO and EPDM fail in a predictable handful of places — seams, penetrations, flashing, and punctures from rooftop equipment service — so we check those first and tell you which situation you are in before quoting.

In most cases yes, and it is the normal way we schedule commercial work. Access, staging and the noisy phases get planned around your hours rather than ours. What needs agreeing up front is the parts that cannot be quiet or invisible: where materials stage, how the crew reaches the roof without crossing tenant space, what happens over occupied areas, and whether any work has to run after hours or on a weekend. Rooftop HVAC is the other conversation — units need access maintained, and their service technicians are a common source of the punctures we end up repairing.

Yes, and an active leak should not wait. What changes is the method — single-ply membranes and adhesives behave differently in the cold, so welding temperatures, adhesive choice and surface prep all get adjusted. Snow and ice have to come off the work area first, which is why some winter commercial calls start as clearing and become a repair. Cold-weather repairs are held to the same standard as any other; where a permanent repair genuinely cannot be made until temperatures come up, we say so and make it watertight in the meantime rather than calling a temporary fix finished.