Leak tracing and detail repair
Commercial Roof Repair in Dallas, TX
Finding the failure is most of the job. Once you know exactly what let the water in, the repair itself is usually straightforward.
Vents, edges and old patches are where a flat roof gives up first, and each one is a place water can find a way in.
Water does not enter above the stain
A steel deck is a run of parallel flutes. Water that gets past the membrane travels along a flute until it finds an opening, and a fastener hole forty feet away serves that purpose as well as one directly overhead. On a concrete deck it spreads sideways across the slab. On wood plank it follows the joint. The drip landing on a desk in the suite below is the end of that path, not the beginning of it.
So we stop looking at the ceiling. The interior location gets marked, then we work outward from the point above it across everything the water could plausibly have used: the closest curb, the closest penetration, the seam running through that bay, the drain sitting in that sump. Anything uphill of the interior point is in play until it is ruled out.
Some of what arrives as a roof leak never touched the roof. Plugged condensate pans, split coil lines, open mortar joints in a parapet above a roof-to-wall transition, and failed sealant on a masonry wall all produce interior water that reads exactly like a membrane failure. Eliminating those takes an hour and prevents a repair that was never going to work.
The details that actually fail on a low-slope roof
Field membrane in the middle of an open bay seldom fails by itself. Failures cluster where the sheet changes plane, changes direction, or gets interrupted by something bolted to the building.
Laps come first. A seam that was rolled but never fully welded holds for a few seasons, then thermal cycling works the weak spot apart. Curb flashings crack at the corner where the sheet got stretched instead of cut and welded. Pitch pans dry out and pull back from the pipe. Clamping rings loosen so water runs past the drain rather than into it. Edge metal lifts, and once the termination is open at the perimeter, wind gets under the sheet and does the rest.
Fastener backout deserves its own paragraph. Screws walk up through the insulation over years of movement and press against the underside of the membrane until they abrade through it from below. Nothing shows on a surface walk. The leak comes from a spot that looks perfect from above, and it gets located by running a hand across the sheet for raised heads and then coring at the point that reads high.
Repairing a cause instead of a symptom
Sealant smeared over a crack is a delay, and it costs the same trip as the correct fix. A split corner on a curb flashing gets cut out and rebuilt with a new corner piece and a proper termination. A failed pitch pan gets emptied, reflashed, and refilled rather than topped off.
Wet insulation comes out. Water trapped in the board does not dry under a sealed membrane, and a patch laid over saturated material simply relocates the leak to the next low point. We cut back to dry board, replace to matching thickness so the surface stays flat, and set the new patch over sound material with the overlap the assembly calls for.
Every weld we make gets probed. A seam probe drawn along a finished edge finds skips that look flawless to the eye. On a mechanically attached single-ply we also check the plate pattern around the repair area, because new membrane set over loose plates fails the same way the original piece did.
What the visit leaves behind
Photographs of every location we opened: the condition we found, the substrate underneath, and the finished repair. A roof plan with each location marked, so the next person on that roof is not starting from zero.
A deficiency list that separates what we repaired that day from what we found and did not touch, with a note on how soon each open item needs attention. If a roof has six problems and only two of them will let water in this winter, that ranking belongs on paper where you can budget against it.
When the assembly is past the point where repairs make financial sense, we say that and show you the cores behind the conclusion. Widespread saturated insulation is a replacement discussion. Spending down a capital budget in eight hundred dollar increments on a roof that needs to come off is the expensive version of being careful.
Seams and laps
Cold-welded or skipped laps opened by thermal cycling. Cut back to sound sheet, rewelded, and probed along the finished edge.
Curbs and penetrations
Cracked corners, stretched flashings, dried-out pitch pans, and equipment supports bearing on unprotected sheet where a pad or sleeper should be carrying the load.
Drains and scuppers
Loose clamping rings, missing strainers, sump edges that hold water, and scuppers set above the level the roof actually drains to.
Edge metal and parapets
Lifted coping, open joints in through-wall counterflashing, and terminations where the fastener spacing never met the uplift the perimeter sees.
Wet insulation
Mapped with cores at the leak and outward until the board comes up dry, then cut out and replaced to matching thickness.
Fastener backout
Screws that have walked up and worn through the membrane from underneath. Found by feel and by core, not by looking at the surface.
Common questions
The leak only shows up in heavy rain. Can you still find it?
Usually, yes. A leak that needs volume is normally a drainage problem or a termination that only submerges when water backs up, so we look at drain sumps, scuppers, low areas that pond, and the height of flashing terminations against the water line those areas reach. If the roof is dry when we are there, we can flood-test a suspect area under controlled conditions rather than waiting for the next storm.
How do you know how far the wet insulation extends?
We core at the leak and then core outward in each direction until the board comes up dry, which brackets the saturated area. On larger areas an infrared scan after sunset shows retained heat where the insulation holds moisture, and we core the flagged areas to confirm before pricing anything. Cores are patched the same day they are pulled.
Is it worth repairing a roof that is close to the end of its life?
Sometimes. If the membrane is brittle but the insulation is dry and the failures are localized, targeted repairs can buy a budget cycle. If cores show saturation across a meaningful share of the field, repairs stop being economical because you are patching around a problem that keeps spreading. We give you the core results and the numbers behind both options.
Do you repair systems you did not install?
Yes. Most repair work is on roofs that someone else installed, which is why the first step is identifying the assembly. TPO, PVC, EPDM, modified bitumen, built-up and metal all get repaired with different materials and different methods, and a patch made of the wrong material is a leak scheduled for later.
Will you have to cut into my roof to diagnose the leak?
Often a small core is the only way to see whether the insulation is wet and what the assembly is made of. A core is roughly the size of a coffee can lid, it is taken in a location that answers a specific question, and it is patched before we leave the roof. We tell you where we plan to cut before we cut it.