Commercial Roofing
On a tilt-wall shell or a tenant finish-out in Edinburg, TX, the roof decides whether every trade under it can work dry. A general contractor reads the roof as one line on the schedule. I read it as a chain of details that all have to close before the next rain: deck, insulation, membrane, wall tie-ins, drains, and every pipe or curb that pokes through. On a new drawing set I look first at the places where the roof meets something else, because that is where the water path begins and where two trades tend to hand a problem back and forth.
This work is for general contractors who need a roofer that can read the set, hold a date, and leave a photo record that stands up when the owner asks questions a year later. Emergency response runs at any hour for a storm over a half-finished building.
Most disputes on a roof come from the seams between scopes, not from the membrane itself. A mechanical contractor sets a unit, a framer builds the curb, a plumber cuts a vent through the deck, and the roofer is asked to make all of it watertight after the fact. I like to walk the roof with the superintendent before the membrane goes down and mark who owns each penetration, each wall tie-in and each piece of edge metal.
Equipment support is the usual trouble spot. A curb built too low leaves no room for proper flashing height, and a unit set on sleepers without a plan for drainage will pond water at its base. Details like these are settled far more cheaply on paper than after the unit is lifted into place, which is why we price rooftop equipment curbs and supports as part of the roof scope and not as an afterthought.
Perimeter work is the other handoff. Coping, fascia and gutter metal often come from a different shop than the membrane, and the two must agree on cleat spacing, seam locations and wall attachment. We coordinate edge metal, coping and gutters with the membrane so the edge holds when the wind pulls on it.
The National Weather Service marks May through October as heat-safety season for the Valley, and the same months carry hurricane readiness from June onward. For a general contractor that means the busiest building months overlap with the hardest months for the roof. A dark deck in full sun runs very hot, adhesives flash off faster than a crew expects, and a membrane laid in the afternoon can look different from the same roll laid at dawn. I schedule the demanding adhesive and seam work for the cooler early hours and keep the afternoon for detail work and cleanup.
Dry-in is the date that matters most. The goal is a roof that sheds water before drywall and rough-in start under it. We can sequence a TPO membrane across a large low-slope building in sections, closing each section each evening with temporary tie-ins so a pop-up storm cannot get under finished work.
An unfinished roof is the weakest roof a building will ever have. Edges are not yet capped, insulation sits exposed in places, and temporary flashings depend on tape and sealant that were never meant to last through a tropical system. Hurricane Dolly brought 50-to-70-mph gusts to Hidalgo County, including Edinburg, Pharr and McAllen, and the National Weather Service recorded only minor damage in that event. A building under construction sees the same wind with far less protection.
Hurricane Hanna in July 2020 added street flooding and a report of shingles blown off a roof in Edinburg.
When a storm does reach an open deck, the first call is to dry the building in. We tarp or temporarily seal the exposed area, then follow with a written look at wind-lifted edges and soaked insulation. Wind-lifted edges and soaked board are the usual findings, and repairs follow the same path as any wind damage roof repair, started through emergency roof repair when water is already inside. The same photos help the owner, the builder's risk carrier and any insurance and restoration adjuster understand what happened.
A spec may call for a thick mechanically attached membrane over polyiso, and the owner may ask what a lighter system would save. I answer that with the failure modes in front of me. A thinner membrane in a hot, sunny climate is more exposed at seams and laps; a lower insulation value changes the energy calculation the building department reviewed under the city's adopted 2018 energy conservation code, and any substitute has to meet the same wind uplift limits as the original.
We put the alternate in writing with the reason for the change, the effect on the water path, and the effect on cost, so the architect can approve it without a meeting.
Where an existing building is getting an addition, the question shifts to tying new roof into old. Sometimes a recover over the existing membrane is possible, and sometimes wet insulation forces a tear-off. A cover board over the insulation is a cheap decision that protects the membrane from heat and foot traffic, and it is worth raising before the bid is locked.
The owner takes the building at closeout, but the roof is the one system they cannot see. A good closeout file shows them what is up there, which matters most to property management companies that inherit the roof. Ours holds dated photos at each stage, the final layout of drains, curbs and penetrations, a note on every flashing detail that deviated from the drawing, and the system information the owner needs when a repair comes up.
For larger roofs I recommend an infrared moisture survey near substantial completion. It gives the owner a dry baseline, so a later leak can be measured against a known condition instead of an argument about when the wet insulation arrived. That baseline is also the cleanest protection for the contractor, since it separates workmanship questions from later damage.
A general contractor working the Valley can span more than one city. One firm may have a distribution building going up near Doolittle Road in Edinburg and a retail pad in McAllen the same quarter, where TxDOT lists widening on Wichita Avenue and South 23rd Street.
We also work the corridor toward Pharr, where the I-2/I-69C interchange project bears on truck routes to the east side. Send the drawings and the site address, and we will say what we need to price and how soon we can walk the roof.
We prepare the roof details ourselves: flashing heights, drain locations, edge metal profiles and curb tie-ins. The submittal goes to the architect with notes on anything that conflicts with the structure or with another trade, so a problem is caught at the table and not on the deck.
The complexity of the penetrations decides it. A simple warehouse box with few units can bring the roofer in at bid time. A building with many curbs, a tight parapet, or a drainage layout that depends on structural slope needs the roofer at the preconstruction meeting, because those details drive the framing.
Foot traffic from mechanical and electrical crews is the most common source of damage. We recommend walk pads along equipment routes and a photo record before and after trade access.
A technician starts from the photo record and the dry baseline, then traces the water path from the interior stain back to the roof and checks seams, penetrations and the nearest drain. Whether it is a workmanship fix or a damage item gets decided from those findings, and we document it either way.