Build-Up Roof Installation Services in Southwest Florida

What Do We Build A Built-Up Roof Out Of On The Gulf Coast? 

Your built-up roof gets made on the deck one ply at a time, and nothing about it comes off a roll as a finished sheet. The version we build is modified bitumen. First a base sheet goes down and anchors to the deck, plies go over it, and a granule surfaced cap sheet closes the top, torched, cold applied, or self adhered depending on the building. The plies are the reason to want one. Any dropped tool or dragged condenser has to get through every layer before it reaches the deck, and that’s time to make a repair instead of a leak. The old version of this roof had gravel on top. We leave the gravel off on this coast, because loose stone lifts off a roof in hurricane wind and lands on whatever is downwind. 

Plies Over One Membrane 

Several bonded layers sit between a puncture and your deck, and every one of them buys time to get a crew up there. 

Cap Sheet, Never Gravel 

The granule surfaced cap sheet stays bonded to the plies in wind, and years later it takes a restoration coating without anyone stripping stone off first. 

Slope Marked Before The First Ply 

Our crew puts a laser on the deck and marks every low spot where water ponds. Then they cut tapered ISO so each of those spots falls toward the nearest drain, and only then does the base sheet get anchored. 

Drip Edge And Coping From Our Own Shop 

We bend the ES-1 drip edge and coping for each job in our own sheet metal shop. The perimeter takes the highest wind load on the roof, and that metal is what holds the assembly down there. 

Photographed Ply By Ply 

Every layer gets photographed in CompanyCam as it goes down, the Florida Product Approval for the assembly sits in the proposal, and as a GAF GoldElite commercial contractor we can offer NDL warranties on eligible systems. 

On a reroof the deck comes first and the system comes second. Our crew maps a wood deck with a pin moisture meter and probes it by hand, and whether a panel stays depends on its condition. Soft or delaminated sheathing comes out, and so does anything that won’t hold a fastener. A panel that’s only wet gets dried, and the assembly doesn’t close until the meter shows the deck under 18%. Steel decks rust at the seams and concrete cracks where water has been getting through. On those decks the crew drives a test fastener into the substrate and pulls it against a gauge. That number tells us what the deck will hold before the first ply is ordered. Multi-ply assemblies weigh more than a mechanically attached single-ply, so where the structure is a question we get it evaluated first. 

Then you see the options side by side. A modified bitumen assembly and a heat welded TPO or PVC single-ply come with different lifespans and different warranties, and a roof with life left in it may only want a restoration coating. Which one fits depends on your deck and on how long you plan to own the building, and since we install all three, we recommend the one that fits your building.