We keep commercial roofs on a schedule instead of waiting for the phone to ring. Owners here sign on for regular inspection and upkeep, and we handle the small things before water works its way down to the deck. The median home in Madison went up in 1979. Roofs of that generation have usually been replaced at least once, and the system sitting up there now is the one worth protecting. That is what a program is for.
Each visit ends with a written record and photographs: what we found, what we fixed on the spot, what needs watching. Over a few years that file becomes an honest history of the roof, and it is what tells you whether the next move is another round of repairs or a full replacement. We cover Madison and the surrounding area out to Sun Prairie. Nothing about the work changes because a building sits farther out.
Trouble on a flat roof is quiet for a long time. Moisture gets into the insulation, travels sideways, and by the time it stains a ceiling tile you are looking at wet deck and structural repair rather than a seam. Staying ahead of that is the smaller job, and it is the one you can plan around. We are a Madison roofing company, and this is most of what we do. Call us for a free estimate on a maintenance program.
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TPO is a single-ply membrane, usually 45 or 60 mil, mechanically fastened or fully adhered over polyiso insulation. The seams are hot-air welded, which makes them stronger than the sheet itself when the weld is run right. Cold welds, dirty seams and skipped probing are where failures start. We check seams, corners, drains and any penetration that has been cut in since the system went down.
Standing seam panels in 24 gauge steel or aluminum move with temperature, so the clips and fastener slots have to let them. On exposed-fastener panels, the washers dry out and back out long before the panel does. We walk the runs, look at seam engagement, check for oil canning that signals a bad substrate, and pull failed fasteners. Kynar finishes hold up well; scratched edges rust first.
Hail bruises a roof before it opens it. On asphalt, it knocks granules loose and fractures the mat underneath, which you see as soft dark circles rather than holes. On a membrane, it leaves stars and punctures around the harder substrate. Metal takes dents that are cosmetic until they crease a seam or crush a rib. We test-square the field, photograph hits, and check soft metals like vents and caps.
Most shingle repairs come down to a small area of damage on an otherwise sound roof: lifted tabs, a slipped course, nail pops working through, or exposed fasteners at a flashing. We pull the damaged shingles, check the deck and underlayment for moisture, replace step and counter flashing where it has pulled loose, and weave the new shingles in. On a 1979 roof, matching the existing material matters and sometimes is not possible.
Age is the common thread. The median home in Madison went up in 1979, and commercial buildings from that era carry roofs that have been torn off and rebuilt at least once, sometimes twice. Each round leaves something behind: old fasteners, a patched seam, flashing cut to fit a system that is no longer up there. We find most problems at those transitions rather than out in the open field. Edges and curbs, mostly.
Water rarely announces itself where it gets in. It runs along a deck, follows a joist, and drops through a ceiling tile thirty feet from the actual breach. On low-slope roofs that means ponding near a clogged drain, a lap seam that has pulled, or wet insulation holding moisture long after the sky cleared. Interior staining is a late symptom. By the time it shows, the structural deck has usually been damp a while.
Finding the real source is the work. Sometimes that means cutting a test square and looking at what the insulation has absorbed, because a wet core will soak a new membrane from underneath and undo the repair. Small repairs hold when the substrate below them is dry and sound. When it is not, replacement is the honest answer, and that scope of work is permitted through the City of Madison. We would rather say so up front than patch the same corner for two more seasons and watch the damage spread past the point where a targeted fix does any good.
Most commercial roofs we work on here are flat or low slope, and the material list is short: TPO, EPDM and PVC single ply, modified bitumen, metal. Each one behaves differently under foot traffic, standing water and rooftop equipment. A membrane that suits an open warehouse deck is the wrong call for a building carrying heavy mechanical units. A low slope retail property in Middleton gets the same detailing as one on the east side.
Specification starts at the deck. We open the existing system, check the substrate for moisture and structural give, then decide whether a recover is honest or whether full replacement is the right answer. Insulation thickness, fastener pattern and drainage all get settled at that point. Flashing at curbs, penetrations and parapet walls is where most systems let go, so that is where the attention goes.
Residential work follows the same logic. The median home in this market was built in 1979, which means plenty of roofs are on their second or third covering, and the decking underneath tells us how the last installation performed. Asphalt shingle covers most of that housing. Standing seam metal earns its place on certain slopes and certain structures. Whatever goes down has to work as a system: underlayment, flashing, ventilation and covering, or water finds the gap and the repairs start early.
Coverage on a commercial roof comes from two separate places, and we keep them separate on paper. Material coverage is written by the manufacturer of the system we install, on their terms, with their conditions and their exclusions. Workmanship is ours. Before anything comes off the deck, we put both in writing: what the manufacturer document covers, what we are responsible for, how long each runs, and what voids either one. You read that before work starts, not after. Questions about a clause get answered plainly. If a term is narrow, we say so rather than talking around it. Nothing in it is written to be hard to read.
Most callbacks start the same way: water shows up somewhere it did not before. The first thing that matters is finding where it actually came from, because a lifted flashing, an open seam, and a rooftop unit set back down wrong all read alike from the ceiling below. Our maintenance records help here. Every visit is logged with photographs and notes, so there is a documented history of the roof rather than one person's memory of it. That record is usually what settles whether a problem traces to installation, to the material, or to age, and it belongs to the property owner.
Much of what we have completed here sits on buildings of the same vintage as the housing around them, where the median home was built in 1979. Low-slope replacements over office and retail space. Parapet and curb flashing rebuilt where the old metal had pulled loose. Membrane roofs stripped to the deck and replaced once the seams stopped holding water. We have also done smaller repairs that took a single visit: a patched penetration, a reset drain, a section of coping re-secured. Residential work runs alongside it, including tear-offs and shingle replacement on houses in Middleton. Most of it is systems that reached the end of their service life and needed to come off.
Every project starts with getting on the roof and looking at what is actually there. Core cuts tell us how many layers we are dealing with and whether the insulation below has taken on moisture. That determines whether a building needs a recover or a full removal, and we say which before anyone commits. On site we stage the work so the property keeps operating: sections opened and dried in the same day, deliveries timed around the tenants. When a deck turns out worse than expected, we stop, show the owner the structural damage, and agree on the repair before going further.