A commercial roof is a budget line, not a home improvement. The decisions that matter are about service life against capital cost, how much of the building has to stop working while you fix it, and whether the warranty you were sold actually covers the thing that failed. This page is written for the person who has to justify the number.
Need a roof assessed, budgeted or fixed? We survey the roof, photograph every deficiency and give you a written report you can take to ownership.
People assume commercial roofing is residential roofing on a bigger building. It is not, and the differences drive every decision that follows.
The slope is the whole story. Most commercial roofs are low slope, often a quarter inch of fall per foot or less. A residential roof sheds water by gravity almost instantly. A low slope roof holds water on it and relies on a continuous waterproof membrane and a working drainage system. That single fact changes the materials, the failure modes and the maintenance requirements.
The roof is occupied. Commercial roofs carry HVAC units, exhaust fans, condenser lines, gas piping, satellite and communications equipment, solar arrays and access walkways. Every one of those is a penetration through the waterproof layer, and penetrations are where roofs leak. A warehouse roof might have four penetrations. A restaurant or a medical building might have sixty.
The building keeps operating. Nobody moves out while the roof is replaced. Work has to be sequenced around trading hours, tenant access, deliveries and in some cases around equipment that cannot be powered down.
The economics are different. On a house, the loss from a leak is the ceiling. On a commercial building it is inventory, equipment, tenant claims, business interruption and in some cases a lease obligation. The roof is frequently the cheapest part of the loss.
A single ply thermoplastic membrane, usually white, heat welded at the seams. It has become the default for new low slope work across DFW for good reasons: the welded seams are strong, the white surface reflects a serious amount of heat in a Texas summer, and the cost sits in a sensible place. Quality varies more than people expect between manufacturers and thicknesses, and a thin membrane on a roof that gets foot traffic will not last.
Synthetic rubber, typically black, in wide sheets with seams that are taped or adhered rather than welded. Long track record, forgiving to install, good in cold. In North Texas the black surface is a real drawback because it absorbs heat and drives cooling load, so it is less common on new work here than in cooler markets.
Also single ply and heat welded, with the significant advantage of chemical resistance. This is the right choice over a commercial kitchen, a restaurant or anywhere grease-laden exhaust lands on the roof, because grease degrades TPO and EPDM over time. It costs more, and on the right building it pays for itself.
Asphalt based, applied in rolled layers, either torch applied, cold adhesive or self adhering. Tough, good underfoot, and well suited to roofs with heavy traffic or lots of equipment. Multi-ply systems give genuine redundancy, which matters when a single ply puncture means a leak.
The traditional tar and gravel system, layers of bitumen and reinforcing fabric with a gravel surface. Still found on plenty of older Dallas buildings and still serviceable. Heavy, slow to install, and increasingly replaced by single ply on re-roofs.
Standing seam on sloped commercial buildings, and structural metal on low slope. Long service life, excellent in wind, and it dents in hail, which in this market is a conversation worth having up front rather than after the first storm.
Sprayed in place, self flashing around penetrations, seamless, and it adds real insulation value. Genuinely good on complex roofs with many penetrations. It requires recoating on a schedule, and a foam roof that is not maintained degrades quickly under Texas UV.
The system matters less than the detailing. Almost every commercial roof failure we are called to is at an edge, a seam, a penetration or a drain, not in the middle of the field. A well detailed cheaper system outlasts a premium membrane installed carelessly, every time.
On a low slope roof, drainage is not a detail, it is the design. Water that does not leave the roof does three things, all bad.
Most manufacturers define ponding as water still standing 48 hours after rain stops, and many warranties exclude damage caused by it. If your roof ponds, the warranty may already be compromised.
The fixes range from clearing drains, through adding drains or tapered insulation crickets, to re-sloping. A survey tells you which.
Wind uplift starts at the edge. If the edge metal, coping or termination bar lets go, wind gets under the membrane and can peel a large area in one event. Codes require heavier fastening in perimeter and corner zones for exactly this reason, and it is a common place to find corners cut on a cheap installation.
Every pipe, curb, vent and conduit is a hole in the waterproofing that relies on flashing to stay sealed. Boots crack, pitch pockets dry out and shrink, and equipment gets serviced by people who are not roofers and who walk on and drill through the membrane without telling anyone.
HVAC curbs are a classic leak source. Condensate lines discharge onto the membrane and keep an area permanently wet. Units get replaced and the new one does not match the old curb. Access panels get left open. This is the single most common source of the leak that appears with no rain.
On single ply, the seam is the weak point by definition. Welded seams should be probed at installation and checked at every inspection.
Clamping rings loosen, strainers go missing, debris accumulates. A drain that does not drain converts the whole roof into a pond.
Commercial roofing has a middle option that residential does not, and it is frequently the right financial answer.
| Repair | Restoration coating | Replacement | |
|---|---|---|---|
| When | Isolated, identified failures | Membrane sound, surface aged, no wet insulation | Widespread failure or saturated insulation |
| Disruption | Minimal | Low, no tear-off | Highest |
| Adds service life | Buys time | Roughly a decade, renewable | Full new life cycle |
| Accounting | Expense | Often expense rather than capital | Capital |
A silicone or acrylic coating applied over a sound existing membrane seals seams and penetrations, adds a reflective surface that cuts cooling load, and comes with its own manufacturer warranty. No tear-off means no landfill, no exposure to weather mid-job, and far less disruption to the tenant.
The condition is that the substrate must be sound and dry. Coating over wet insulation seals the moisture in and guarantees you replace the roof sooner and at greater cost. That is why a moisture survey comes before any restoration proposal, not after.
We will survey the roof, take moisture readings and give you all three options priced, rather than only the one that suits us.
That report is what you take to ownership or the board. A verbal opinion and a single number is not a survey.
Commercial warranties are more complex than residential ones and the differences are financially significant.
Covers the membrane itself against manufacturing defect. It does not cover installation, and defect is a rare cause of failure.
Issued by the manufacturer covering both the material and the installation, available only through certified contractors, and inspected by the manufacturer before it is issued. This is the one worth having.
An NDL warranty means the manufacturer’s liability is not capped at the original material cost. On a large roof the difference between NDL and a capped warranty can be very large.
The exclusion that catches people: most commercial warranties require documented periodic inspections. Buildings routinely discover at claim time that the warranty lapsed years earlier because nobody scheduled them. If you hold a warranty, find out what maintenance it obliges you to perform.
The single highest return item in commercial roofing is unglamorous: inspect twice a year, keep the drains clear, fix small things while they are small.
A program typically covers a spring inspection after storm season and an autumn inspection before winter, clearing drains and scuppers, resealing pitch pockets, checking seams and terminations, and a written report with photographs each time. That report also satisfies most warranty inspection requirements, which is a second reason to have one.
The economics are straightforward. Clearing a blocked drain is cheap. Replacing the insulation and deck under a section that ponded for two years is not.
Most of the practical difficulty on a commercial job has nothing to do with roofing.
The stakes are higher than on a house, and so is the range of competence in the market. Five things separate a contractor who should be on your building from one who should not.
System warranties are only available through certified installers, and certification is specific to the manufacturer and often to the product line. A contractor certified for one membrane is not automatically approved for another. If a system warranty is part of what you are buying, confirm the certification covers the exact product on the specification.
General liability limits appropriate to the value of your building and its contents, plus workers compensation. Ask for the certificate and call the carrier listed to confirm it is current. A residential-scale policy on a commercial job leaves the gap sitting with the building owner.
Fall protection on a low slope roof with unguarded edges is not optional, and neither is a plan for working above occupied space. Ask what their program is and who enforces it on site. An incident on your roof becomes your problem regardless of who employed the person.
A roofer who does excellent residential work has not necessarily detailed a restaurant roof around grease exhaust, or sequenced a tear-off around a warehouse that receives deliveries every morning. Ask for buildings of similar type and complexity, and call them.
The proposal should name the manufacturer, the system, the membrane thickness, the insulation type and R value, the attachment method, the edge detail and the warranty being provided. A single line saying replace roof with a price beside it tells you nothing and cannot be compared with anything.
On a low slope roof in North Texas the surface color and the insulation are genuine operating expenses, not just building science.
Reflectivity. A dark membrane in a Dallas summer runs dramatically hotter than a white one, and that heat becomes cooling load. Reflective single ply and reflective coatings reduce the peak surface temperature substantially, which shows up on the utility bill and also slows the degradation of the membrane itself. It is one of the few decisions that improves both the running cost and the service life.
Insulation. Re-roofing is generally the only practical opportunity to improve roof insulation, and energy code requirements have risen over the years. A roof being replaced today will usually need more insulation than the one coming off, which is a cost line worth knowing about before it appears in a proposal rather than after.
Tear-off triggers code. A full replacement typically brings the roof up to current code, which can include insulation levels, edge securement and drainage. A recover or a coating may not trigger the same requirements. This is a legitimate part of the financial comparison between restoring and replacing, and a contractor who has not mentioned it has probably not thought about it.
Solar changes the math. If there is any prospect of a solar array going on the roof, resolve the roof first. Installing panels over a membrane with five years left means paying to remove and reinstall the array when the roof fails. Sequencing the two together saves that entirely.
North Texas hail and straight line wind hit commercial roofs as hard as residential ones, and the claim process is more involved. Hail bruising on a single ply membrane is not always visible without test cuts. Wind damage usually starts at the perimeter. Business interruption is frequently the larger part of the loss, so speed of temporary repair matters more than on a house.
Our storm damage and hail damage pages cover the claim mechanics, and most of it applies here. The commercial differences are that scopes are larger and more contested, documentation needs to be thorough enough to survive an engineer’s review, and getting the building dried in quickly protects far more than the roof.
Retail and strip centres, restaurants and commercial kitchens, warehouses and light industrial, offices and medical suites, churches and schools, apartment and multifamily buildings, and self storage. Across the Dallas Fort Worth metroplex from our DeSoto office, including Dallas, DeSoto, Duncanville, Cedar Hill, Lancaster, Red Oak, Midlothian, Waxahachie, Grand Prairie, Arlington, Mansfield, Irving, Garland, Mesquite, Richardson, Plano and Carrollton.
For residential work see our main page for roofing in Dallas, and if water has already reached the interior, water damage restoration covers drying and rebuild.
It depends far more on maintenance and detailing than on the system chosen. A well maintained single ply roof with working drainage substantially outlives a neglected one of the same specification. Heat and UV here shorten service life relative to milder climates, which makes reflective surfaces and real maintenance more valuable than they are elsewhere.
Only an approved contractor should touch it, or you risk voiding coverage. Tell us who issued the warranty and we will work within it, or coordinate with the manufacturer directly.
Almost never. Work is sequenced so the building stays dry and operating. Odour and noise are managed by scheduling and by controlling fresh air intakes.
It is a fluid applied membrane over a sound existing roof, and yes, when the substrate is dry it is a genuine option that adds around a decade of service life with a manufacturer warranty. It is not a solution for wet insulation, which is why the moisture survey comes first.
Almost always HVAC condensate. A blocked line or an overflowing drain pan puts water on the deck exactly like a leak. Check the units before assuming the roof failed.
Twice a year as a baseline, plus after any significant storm. Many warranties require documented inspections, and buildings frequently discover coverage lapsed because nobody scheduled them.
Yes. It adds structural load, degrades the membrane and is excluded from most warranties. Water still standing 48 hours after rain is the usual threshold. It is worth fixing on its own merits.
Yes. Commercial scopes are larger and more contested than residential, and documentation needs to be thorough enough to stand up to an engineer’s review. We will meet the adjuster on the roof and provide the survey and photographs.
Yes. The survey report gives prioritised recommendations with budget figures split into immediate, this year and capital planning, in a form you can take to ownership.
Free commercial roof survey with a written, photographed report. Prioritised, budgeted and yours to keep whatever you decide.