You have tenants, inventory, or customers under that roof. A leak over a warehouse rack or a server closet is not a roofing problem. It's a business problem, and it usually shows up on the wettest day of the year when nobody can get on the building.
We've worked on low-slope roofs across Los Angeles, San Bernardino and Riverside counties. Warehouses, retail centres, office buildings, multi-unit residential. We'll tell you plainly whether you're looking at a repair, a section, a coating, or a full tear-off, and show you the photos we took to get there.
Standing water 48 hours after rain is the number one killer of a low-slope roof. We map where water sits and why it isn't reaching the drains.
Parapet walls, counterflashing, edge metal, reglets. Most commercial leaks start at a termination, not out in the open field of the membrane.
HVAC curbs, vents, conduit, drain bowls, skylights. Anything that punches through the membrane is a joint, and every joint has a service life.
Split seams, blisters, shrinkage at the perimeter, gravel loss on built-up roofs, chalking on aged single-ply. This tells us how much roof is left.
TPO and PVC single-ply are the common choice on warehouses and retail: mechanically fastened or fully adhered, hot-air welded seams, and a reflective white surface that takes real heat load off the building in an Inland Empire summer. PVC is the one we lean toward where kitchen exhaust, grease or chemical discharge hits the roof. EPDM is a proven rubber membrane and does well on roofs with a lot of odd geometry, though the dark surface runs hotter. Built-up roofing (multiple plies in asphalt with a cap sheet or gravel) is still a serious system, particularly for roofs where crews are up there servicing equipment. Coatings have a real place too: if the substrate is dry and sound and the problem is age and UV, a coating buys years without a tear-off. If there's wet insulation under the membrane, a coating just seals the water in. We core-cut to find out rather than guess.
"Flat" is misleading. These roofs are built with fall, and code requires positive drainage on new low-slope work for a reason. If a roof is ponding, the fix is usually structural or insulative, not more sealant: tapered insulation to build slope toward the drains, crickets between drains and behind curbs, and drains and overflow scuppers that are clear and set at the low point. Ponding adds dead load, accelerates membrane breakdown, and turns a small seam failure into an interior loss. We also plan the work around how you operate: deliveries, trading hours, tenant access, noise over an office.
Often, yes. If the membrane is generally sound and the failure is localised to seams, flashing or a few penetrations, a targeted repair is the right call. We'll tell you when a roof is far enough gone that repairs stop being worth the money.
We plan around your hours. We agree access, staging and sequencing before we start, and we can work in sections or outside trading hours where the building needs it. There's noise on any roofing job, but it doesn't have to land in the middle of your business day.
Core cuts. We open small test areas, look at the layers, and patch them properly. It's the only way to know whether you're buying a coating or a tear-off, and it's a lot cheaper than finding out afterward.
We'll come out, get on the roof, and put it in writing. Free inspection across LA and the Inland Empire.
