Tenant Schedules
As a commercial building owner, your tenants may be fine with having someone working on their roof during working hours or they may not. This will largely depend on the type of business and how sensitive their clients are to noise, dust and debris.In a dentist’s office or restaurant, for example, tenants may not want a roofer drilling above their clients heads. If you have open or unfinished ceilings this can be an additional concern as any drilling may shake down dust onto clients or display areas of the establishment.
In such cases it is important to talk to your roofer about what can be done to work around the tenant’s needs, making sure that enough time is left for cleanup before a store or restaurant opens each day.
It is also important to establish realistic timelines for the completion of the project. A roof that is available to be worked on 24/7 will be finished much earlier than one with a limited work-time window and your roofer needs to be aware of these factors in order to properly schedule your job.
Preventative Maintenance is Essential
One of the biggest differences between commercial and industrial flat roofs is just how essential preventative maintenance is in the commercial field.
If an industrial roof leaks, unless it leaks on expensive and water-sensitive machinery, there is usually not much harm done. Ceilings, walls, floors, all are usually roughly finished and while leaks are inconvenient and annoying, they rarely result in extremely high-cost damages. This is not the case for commercial buildings!Commercial buildings are usually finished, housing products and/or sensitive equipment. While water stains are never desirable, they are much more easily overlooked in an industrial setting than a finished office, store or restaurant.
Preventative maintenance is important to here to prevent business loss. It is much better to replace your roof a year or two early than to wait for catastrophic failure!
Call Your Roofer!
We cannot stress enough the importance of calling your flat roofer whenever installing new HVAC systems, skylights, air ducts or plumbing through the roof.
Even though the contractors installing these systems work on roofs regularly, they do not necessarily know the correct process to seal your roofing membrane. Caulking and tar are no substitutes for proper flashing, and we see their use often on penetration installations.
Countless times we have been called in for leaks only to find upon arrival that they are due to improperly sealed roof penetrations which could have been easily avoided by simply calling in a flat roofer to inspect the work done.
Call Northern Seal today to schedule an inspection, maintenance or a re-roof.
