System selector
Membranes, modified bitumen, built-up roofing, coatings, metal, SPF, and tested assemblies.
Not published yet
Commercial roofs
Manage the assembly, the risk, and the building below it.
Commercial roofing decisions connect the deck, air and vapor control, insulation, cover board, membrane, edges, drainage, equipment, maintenance, and operations.
30-second answer
How should a building owner choose a commercial roof system?
Do not compare TPO, EPDM, PVC, modified bitumen, built-up roofing, coatings, and metal as surface materials alone. Attachment, drainage, substrate, insulation, edges, traffic, maintenance, and building use can determine the better fit.
The assembly
You are buying five layers, not a membrane.
Most commercial proposals are named after the top layer. The layers beneath it decide attachment, condensation risk, service life, and what the roof costs to own.
- Membrane or covering
The weather-facing layer, and the one nearly every proposal is named after.
- Cover board
Separates membrane from insulation and absorbs traffic, hail, and fastener stress.
- Insulation
Thermal performance, and the layer that sets fastener length, attachment method, and often the slope.
- Air and vapor control
Where condensation risk is won or lost, and a reason two identical membranes can perform differently.
- Structural deck
What everything is attached to, and what limits weight, attachment, and whether a recover is possible at all.
Drainage and edge securement cut across all five. A roof with the right membrane and the wrong slope, drains, or perimeter detailing is still the wrong roof.
Be honest about the tools
The tools here are residential-first.
There is no commercial capital-plan tool on this site yet, and the cost estimator’s material ranges are steep-slope residential. Two published pages are still worth an owner’s time.
Read what this site cannot determine
Structural capacity, wind and snow loads, tested-assembly selection, and coverage decisions are explicitly out of scope here.
Open the residential quote checklist
Written for a house, but the scope-definition discipline transfers directly to a roof RFP.
Owner roadmap
What a building owner has to decide, in order.
None of these guides is published yet. They are sequenced the way a capital decision actually runs: system, condition, drainage, moisture, operations, then the asset plan.
Recover or tear off
Moisture surveys, test cuts, structural limits, trapped moisture, code, warranty, and lifecycle implications.
Not published yet
Drainage & edges
Slope, drains, scuppers, overflow, ponding, perimeter and corner pressures, and edge securement.
Not published yet
Energy & moisture
Insulation, cover board, air and vapor control, condensation risk, reflectance, and climate.
Not published yet
Operations planning
Occupants, shutdowns, odor, noise, cranes, staging, access, rooftop equipment, and phasing.
Not published yet
Asset management
Inspections, maintenance, repair logs, warranty requirements, budgets, and replacement timing.
Not published yet
Owner-controlled scope
Write a roof RFP that produces comparable proposals.
The commercial buying-kit track is planned, not written. The published residential checklist is the closest working model of the same discipline: define the work, then compare the price.
Preview the buying kit