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Building trades often fall into very specific roles. You would not ask a plumber to install low voltage lighting for your Tampa plant, for example. You would not call an electrician to re-attach roof flashing on your Tampa industrial building. Would you, though, ask a Tampa commercial roofer to work with you on your heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems? In some cases, the answer should be, “Yes!”

1: Avoid Punctures

According to the experts at Facilities Net, a leading cause of roofing failure is puncture of single-ply membrane by tradespeople who visit your company’s roof. HVAC technicians servicing your rooftop cooling units can easily damage the roof, whether with their boots, tools or equipment. A strategy to avoid and address punctures and tears is to have your Tampa commercial roofer provide walkways around the HVAC installations, keeping workers’ boots up off the roofing surface. The same roofer can revisit the roof after HVAC work to ensure any accidental punctures are properly sealed.

2: New Installations

Many rooftop A/C systems require regular replacement after around 10 years. This may necessitate replacing the A/C curb, which directly impacts the roof membrane or built-up roofing (BUR) in place. Anytime a contractor plans to cut through your building’s roof, a Tampa commercial roofer should be part of the process. Installing a new A/C curb involves cutting into the roof deck, attaching the curb and providing waterproof seals on all four sides. Do not rely on your HVAC contractor to complete that work satisfactorily. Keep the lines of communication open between HVAC company and your roofer, so the work is done expertly. Your roof’s warranty could be voided if the HVAC technician does the job incorrectly.

3: Code-Required Fasteners

Especially in hurricane-prone Florida, inadequate fastening between HVAC systems equipment, curbs and roof are a major challenge and cause for concern. Your AC installer may be unfamiliar with building code restrictions regarding these all-important attachment points. Your Tampa commercial roofer lives by the Florida Building Code day in and day out. Having the two trades work together can ensure your rooftop AC units stay put in high winds, says Facilities Net. Get ahead of the codes and competition by contacting Aderhold Roofing today to ensure your HVAC contractor treats your building’s roof right. By partnering with Aderhold Roofing, you can protect both your cooling plant and your roof from unintentional damage from HVAC technicians.

In Florida, both sunshine and rain do real, measurable damage to a commercial building’s roof. Combine them with a little wind, and you have three weather patterns that do the most damage to commercial roofs.

Sun

Tampa’s northern neighbors go through entire seasons where the sun just glances down at a low angle above the horizon. A low sun angle means sunlight is spread over a large area and therefore is very diffuse. Not so in Tampa: our sun angle is consistently between 38° and 86° above the horizon, says the Florida Solar Energy Center.

Why should you care about sun angle? The closer to 90°, the stronger the sunlight per square meter. Sunlight has several wavelengths:

1. Visible light
2. Ultraviolet light
3. Infrared light

Ultraviolet sunlight destroys chemicals in roofing membrane or BUR layers. Infrared light heats up your commercial roof, sending heat into your roof deck, making your energy bills higher than if the infrared light reflected back.

Wind

Most Tampa winds are gentle breezes, but some are sustained high winds. When high winds strike, they wreak havoc on any commercial roof. Wind uplift can tear apart seams, pull up flashing, turn layers from built-up roofing over, and send wind-borne debris tearing across your roof.

Tampa lies squarely in the hurricane season’s target area, with an average of 12 named hurricanes a year, says the Land O’ Lakes Patch. You have to protect your roof against wind.

According to the City of Tampa, our city’s commercial buildings lie between the 160-mph and 150-mph wind speed zones. You must take basic precautionary steps to prevent wind-borne debris from tearing off your commercial roof.

Rain

Water infiltration can come after any rain, and Tampa gets nearly four feet of rain annually, according to U.S. Climate Data. That much rain can compress deck insulation, clog internal drains and seep into weak seams on a commercial roof.  

Remedies

Before fighting a war on three fronts against the sun, wind, and rain, communicate your concerns with your local roofing contractor. One remedy, such as a reflective coating applied atop your existing commercial roof to lower cooling costs, could also provide waterproofing, for example.

Careful inspection can prevent weak areas susceptible to wind uplift and water infiltration. If you need assistance battling the Florida sun, wind, and rain, please contact us today at Aderhold Roofing. We stand ready to reinforce your efforts to protect your commercial roof.

Somewhere between patching a roof for basic roof repair and complete tear-off lies the practical and economical middle ground of commercial roof preservation. For any facilities manager nagged by an aging roof and cornered by limited capital, preservation of a commercial roof is a great strategy for getting the most out of existing infrastructure.

What is Commercial Roof Preservation?

Any plan that incorporates inspection, repair and preventive maintenance, all specifically with a goal of extending the life of an existing roof, can be considered preservation services of your roof. Whether you oversee a small storefront business with a charming Mansard shingled roof or a logistical center with a sprawling 100,000-square-foot single-ply roof, commercial roof preservation can help you save money, postpone tear-off and replacement, and minimize business disruptions.

Steps to Preservation

Key to thinking about long-term success with an older Tampa roof is having a guiding plan to preserve existing roofing assets:

• Initial inspection
• Cleaning
• Immediate repair
• Waterproof coatings

These four steps can help turn one of the most expensive features of any commercial building — the roof — from a budget-busting headache into a contributor to your bottom line.

How Preservation Makes Money

Suppose (in simplified, round numbers) your single-ply roof cost your company $480,000 six years ago. If you had to replace it today, you paid $80,000 a year for its service life. If roofing preservation can add another six years to your existing roof, your annual outlay drops to $40,000.

Roof preservation programs generally cost only a few percentage points of the cost of a new roof, so for possibly as little as $28,800 (one percent times six years) you could double your (nearly) half-million dollar roof’s useful life. That is like putting as much as $451,200 back into your Tampa business.

Partners in Preservation

Your local, reliable commercial roofer will have unique ideas about roof preservation, especially under conditions like Tampa’s near-tropical sun. Your particular roof may require seam repair and pressure washing, while another low-slope roof may only require inspection and waterproofing. When you partner with a roofer tuned into roof preservation, instead of just a quick sale for reroofing, you will decrease maintenance costs and increase your roof’s return on investment (ROI).

Please consider Aderhold Roofing your trusted, local partners in preserving your commercial roof. Contact us today to set up an appointment. We can explain our process and take a preliminary look at your roof.

If you agree your Tampa-area business needs an annual roof maintenance plan, you are already ahead of many other industrial and business property managers. Put yourself on top by knowing what four attributes set an ordinary roof maintenance agreement apart from great roof maintenance plans.

Details, Details

The best roof maintenance agreements are detail-oriented. It is not enough to know your commercial roofer will react to a roofing situation covered by the plan; will that same roofer perform a close-up inspection to catch incipient damage and stop it? Consider these details:

1. Emerging fasteners in metal decking that push up against single-ply membrane (“tenting”) lead to rips
2. Corrosion between fair and unfair metals in contact around mechanical fasteners and flashing
3. Failing seams — These may simply lie in place; you do not realize the overlapping seam has opened up unless your commercial roofer gets up close and checks the seam integrity
4. Internal drain failure — Unless your roofer gets down and checks beneath the strainer, you may not know the area around the drain has deteriorated from standing water

The best roof maintenance plans include close inspection by trained professionals who do not overlook the small details.

Inside Out

The best commercial roofers include an inspection from inside the building, to catch signs of a water leak, glimpses of the roof deck itself (by looking above drop ceilings, for example), and locations where roof piercings come through into the building. If roof inspectors look up and see light around a plumbing stack or HVAC pipe, they know water will enter where light does.

Hurricane Heads-Up

In the Tampa area, the best roof maintenance plans include hurricane awareness and high wind mitigation steps. The plan will call for inspectors to check areas prone to wind damage:

• Water barriers
• Deck sheathing
• Roof-to-wall connections
• Parapets
• Edge securement

Qualified roofing inspectors will be familiar with the Florida Building Code’s Chapter 15 requirements for commercial roofs.

Written Evidence

A great roofing maintenance plan begins and ends with paperwork. Your inspection team will:

• Photograph and document all roof areas
• Map out or sketch the roof for clarity in specifying needed repair work
• Be familiar with any warranties in force
• Write a complete, detailed report on roof condition, problem areas and proposed solutions

For peace of mind and a great commercial roofing maintenance plan, contact us at Aderhold Roofing, providing quality service to Florida facilities managers and business owners since 2011.

How is commercial roof maintenance different from roof preservation? This is not meant to be a puzzle, but for far too many Tampa facilities managers, the two concepts seem to blend in a murky misunderstanding. Three key areas of preservation separate it from routine maintenance. Roof preservation is a guiding strategy to keep your investment working longer, harder, for less money than you would spend on a new roof.

What is Roof Preservation?

Roof maintenance is a regular, planned response to normal wear and tear. Your own facilities crew may clean off your roof after a bad Tampa rainstorm. Your partner in commercial roofing may perform annual maintenance to keep your roof performing well. None of that specifically preserves your roof.

Roof preservation means taking a long view toward economizing on roofing materials, extending the life of your existing commercial roof, and avoiding costly tear-off and replacement until absolutely necessary.

Three Key Areas

Aderhold Roofing views preservation of a commercial roof as a step above regular but necessary maintenance. If we know your goal is to eke out five to ten more years from your existing roof, we will work in three areas to make that happen:

• Inspect — A thorough annual or semiannual inspection will reveal weak spots, previous deteriorating repairs and uneven wear.
• Coat — Central to roof preservation is the judicious application of the right coatings; preservative coatings can do much to extend the life of any roofing material, reflect harmful sunlight (infrared and ultraviolet radiation) and waterproof all the roofing elements
• Save — A costly capital expense like a roof is best afforded on your schedule, not your roof’s. By preserving your existing roof, you can save for a planned, economical tear-off and replacement in later years

Details, Details

A good commercial roofer will assess each part of your roof and apply different preservatives and coatings suited to metal, asphalt, rubber and synthetic materials:

• Flashing
• Seams
• Scuppers and internal drains
• Parapets
• Mechanical fasteners

While many coatings can be sprayed on, some will require careful hand-brushing to ensure long life.

At Aderhold Roofing, we value your continued business more than a single big pay week. We would rather help you keep your current roof performing well for another five years than have you spend money on a huge capital outlay, a new roof. Contact Aderhold Roofing today to see how we can be your roof’s best ally in roof preservation.

For many business people, any conversation becomes a competition to win, rather than an opportunity to serve. By now nearly everyone in the business world has heard Steven J. Covey’s insightful quotation, “Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.” A dedicated Tampa commercial roofer, though, will spend time asking the right questions and listening to your answers.

Questions

When you interview prospective commercial roofers for your Tampa-area commercial property, you expect to ask a lot of questions. What are their certifications, licenses, insurance documents and client references?

Hearing the roofer’s questions can be more valuable than hearing answers to your own inquiries. The questions a good commercial roofer should be asking fall into three categories:

• Your building’s history
• Your familiarity with roofing types
• Your anticipated commercial roofing needs for the next five years

History

A roofer cannot estimate or bid on work without knowing the roof’s condition and a little something of its history. When a roofer asks for documents, blueprints or photographs of your building, the roofer is establishing a clear timeline. This timeline uncovers your building’s history (for good or bad) of roof maintenance (or neglect).

Roofing Types

When a Tampa commercial roofer asks a facilities manager about roofing types, the goal is to gain a better sense of the type of care and attention the manager currently puts into the roof. If you truly do not know whether your building has a single-ply membrane or built-up roofing (BUR), say so. Honesty beats bluff every time.

Look to the Future

An exceptional Tampa commercial roofer is hoping to build a strong, long-lasting relationship with each customer. The question about your anticipated needs helps the roofer plan an overall strategy:

• Extend the roof’s lifespan and preserve the roof economically
• Isolate trouble spots while planning for a full tear-off and replacement
• Convert the roof to become a profit center through solar panels or a plaza deck

To ensure your roofer asks all the right questions, make sure to invite questions. You can lead the conversation toward the three important categories, but try to leave the roofer room to inquire.

To have all your answers questioned by a premier Tampa commercial roofer, contact us at Aderhold Roofing. We know the right questions to ask you, the client, so we can come up with the right solutions for your needs.

Clever Tampa business owners and facilities managers have many ways to turn overhead into revenue, and a commercial roof is one place to start. As Forbes magazine outlines, any cost center can turn into a profit center if you kill overhead costs, invent revenue from the expense, and support your business’s overall strategy.

Kill Overhead Costs

Work with your commercial roofer to find the balance between roof preservation and losing money on a failing roof. While a waterproof coating could add several years of life to a mature roof, a capital investment in a new roof could carry your business into the next two decades at lower overall cost than the price of semiannual repairs.

Another way to decrease roof expenses is to choose new roofing material wisely. Single-ply products, for example, need almost no maintenance, but are more expensive initially than older methods (built-up roofing — BUR — or modified bitumen). BUR and modified bitumen are cheaper to install but require substantial maintenance costs.

Invent Revenue

A roof is a vast expanse of largely untapped space for most Tampa businesses. How much real estate would you need to, for example, rent out space for a radio mast or satellite dish? Even if your own business does not need either piece of technology, you may be able to invent revenue by leasing roof space to a communications company.

If embarking on a rental strategy, ensure roof preservation by having your partner in commercial roofing, your local Tampa roofing contractor, inspect and ready the section of roof to be given over to the new venture.

Support Your Business

Your business’s roof can support your business goals, too. Suppose you have an overall strategy to reduce power consumption by 10 percent. A highly reflective roof coating applied to an existing roof can help lower cooling costs. But cool roofs go beyond simple cost calculations; position your business as environmentally friendly to Tampa, and show you are helping to reduce the heat island effect’s worst issues:

• Increasing summertime peak energy demand
• Climbing air conditioning costs
• Air pollution
• Greenhouse gas emissions
• Heat-related illness and mortality
• Water quality

Everything on that list is vital to Tampa’s commerce and tourism; your business can capitalize on the goodwill and positive public relations. Contact us at Aderhold Roofing to help not just with commercial roof preservation, but positioning your business as a community leader.

Tampa and surrounding Hillsborough County are tourist and commercial centers, with the county attracting some 22 million people in 2015, according to Tourism Economics. A slice of their $3.6 billion in tourist dollars could find its way to your commercial property, if you take advantage of one of the cooler aspects of a flat roof.

Flat Roof = Profit Center

If your Tampa property is a hotel, restaurant, motel, cafe, pub or similar establishment, consider a rooftop patio. Your Tampa commercial roofer can work with you to determine what modifications might be needed to transform all that square footage into a hip, cool, vibrant rooftop party place.

Where you see only HVAC units, an engineer and the experts at Aderhold Roofing can envision weatherproof seating, railings, mood lighting and a panoply of stars above the heads of giddy guests.

Get a Charge

Crunch these numbers: 365.25 – 81.25 = 244; it is the number of sunny or partially sunny days in Tampa annually. Your Tampa roof, even if it is not conducive to the tourist trade, can be great spot for solar panels that deliver free electricity to your business. With 27 percent of Tampa’s days being completely sunny, you have plenty of opportunity to tap the free energy beaming down on your flat roof.

A solar array on a flat roof is easy to service, leaves a very small footprint on the existing roofing material, and can be installed with relative ease by coordinating with your Tampa commercial roofer and a local solar energy contractor.

Not only will you reap lower energy bills, you can get money-back rebates from TECO and pay no state sales tax on solar components. All for making good use of a flat roof.

A Passive Punch

Another cool thing about your company’s flat roof is its ability to cool your building. With the right mix of rooftop insulation and reflective roofing material, your Tampa commercial roofer can install a cool roof, one that lowers cooling costs by reflecting sunlight away from the building.

For the one-time cost of installing cool roofing elements, your building can help lower cooling costs, making every part of your Tampa commercial building more comfortable through the long, hot summers. Aderhold Roofing can help you see more benefits to your flat roof. Contact us today to set up a site visit and to discuss other ways to save with your flat roof.

Here on Florida’s west coast, our extreme weather can include blistering heat, high humidity, hail, hurricane-force winds and torrential rains. Our volatile climate makes it essential to keep the roof on your commercial building in the best possible condition, and this is easier to accomplish with the help of a knowledgeable local roofer. A Tampa commercial roofer knows that helping your roof reach its full lifespan requires a multi-prong approach that includes:

• Regular, in-depth inspections
• Planned routine maintenance
• Timely repairs
• Effective preservation efforts

How Your Contractor’s Local Knowledge Impacts Your Roof

You may not realize that your contractor’s experience with the nuances of our local climate directly affects the performance of your commercial roof in a variety of ways. Here’s a look at how local expertise relates to different roofing issues and how it can improve your ability to protect and maximize the value of this costly asset:

• UV degradation. A knowledgeable contractor understands how Tampa’s brutal sun speeds up the chemical breakdown of different roofing materials, and can advise you about effective solutions to minimize the deterioration, such as applying a highly-reflective coating.
• Wind damage. The high winds we sometimes experience can cause billowing or tearing of a roof membrane, so a skilled roofer makes checking the condition of flashings and mechanical fasteners a priority during routine and post-storm inspections.
• Water damage. Leaks that occur during and after a heavy rain can cause structural deterioration of your roof and building, facilitate mold growth, damage interior finishes or ruin contents like equipment and inventory. An experienced Tampa roofer knows how to limit potential damage by ensuring that the drainage system is fully functional, addressing issues with ponding, and identifying problem areas and then analyzing the roof so sound repairs can be made using the correct materials and techniques.
• Age-related wear. A Tampa commercial roofer can advise you on how to extend the life of your roof as it ages with effective preservation methods like applying a waterproof coating. When the time comes for a replacement, a local roofer not only knows how to meet all necessary code requirements, they can also offer recommendations on the best material choice for our climate – such as a single-ply TPO membrane that saves energy by reflecting the sun’s rays and resists premature aging from high temperatures and UV degradation.

Contact us today at Aderhold Roofing for local expertise on your Tampa commercial roofing needs.

Your commercial roofer may tell you that your business’s roof is a bit like a desert. Vast areas of it are downright boring. A few spots are where all the action is. Leak action, that is. Most of your industrial or commercial roof is just a stretch of single-ply, modified bitumen or some other roofing material. Piercings, add-ons and edges are the trouble spots — not exactly oases, but definitely water-prone areas.

Piercings

The most obvious leak culprits are holes cut through your roof. Everything from sanitary stacks to internal drains needs to be checked thoroughly. The rubber boots around piercings are prone to break down in the Tampa heat and sun. Once they lose their elasticity, they can crack, allowing tiny rivulets of water to enter and damage your roof deck.

Add-Ons

That HVAC unit is supposed to sit on a curb, but not all curbs are properly sloped to match the low-slope roof on which they sit. New signage, radio masts and satellite dishes are all likely leak areas. Make certain your commercial roofer checks attachment points of all equipment, since a single loose fastener can allow water to creep into your building and ruin roof insulation, decking and more.

Edges

Roof edges, parapets and metal fastenings are all common spots for leaks. Special attention needs to be paid to any place where water can back up, such as around a clogged scupper.

Seams

Open seams can admit water, but these are usually easily detectable and remedied during annual inspections and routine maintenance. Make certain your commercial roofer properly identifies not only the roofing material, but the original method of sealing the seam. A chemical adhesive is not the same as a hot-torch seal, for example.

Slope and Decking

Because nearly all commercial roofs are low-slope roofs, finding and solving leaks is a challenge. Water flows downhill, yes, but your commercial roofer will first mark the interior spot of a leak and then trace its path with an understanding that your roof’s metal deck affects that path. As the experts at Facilities Net point out, a commercial roofer must know the orientation of the metal decking to correctly chart the leak on the exterior.

Leave your commercial building’s roof in the expert hands of the professionals from Aderhold Roofing. We can trace and stop leaks before they ruin your building’s rooftop integrity. Contact us today and stay dry tomorrow.