Emergency response
Water inside an occupied building is an operations problem first
On a commercial building the roof leak is usually the smaller cost. The larger ones are the tenant whose stock got wet, the production line that stopped, and the ceiling grid and floor covering that have to be replaced afterwards.
What to do in the first hour
- Contain and divert. Bins, poly sheeting run to a drain, and anything valuable moved out of the path. A temporary diversion above a ceiling grid saves far more than it costs.
- Deal with the electrical risk. Water into fittings, panels or racks means isolating circuits rather than working around them.
- Photograph everything, with times. The affected area, the ceiling, the contents, and the water itself.
- Note the weather. Wind direction and rainfall intensity are diagnostic: a leak that only appears with wind from one direction is a different defect from one that appears in every heavy rain.
- Record where it entered the space, which is rarely where it entered the roof, but is the starting point for tracing it.
What temporary work can and cannot do
Emergency work on a wet, and often windy, roof is about getting the water stopped safely. That may be a membrane patch welded in, a temporary dry-in over a damaged area, or sealing a specific detail that has failed. What it is not is a diagnosis: the same conditions that make the leak urgent make the roof difficult to assess properly.
Nobody should be on a low-slope roof in lightning, in high wind, or on a roof standing in water deep enough to hide drains, skylights and edges. A skylight under ponded water is a hole with a lid on it. Heat is the other one nobody plans for: a dark membrane in August is far hotter than the air temperature, and emergency work in that is a heat-illness risk as much as a fall risk.
Tracing it properly, afterwards
Start from inside and work up
Water travels along deck flutes, purlins and conduit before it drops. The entry point can be a long way from the stain, especially on a metal deck.
Check the usual suspects in order
Penetrations and curbs, then drains and scuppers, then terminations and edge metal, then seams, then the field. The field of a membrane roof is rarely the cause.
Look for the trade that was up there
A new conduit run, a fresh satellite mount, an abandoned unit cut free and left. Unflashed penetrations left by other trades are one of the most common causes of a sudden leak on a roof that was fine for years.
Scan for wet insulation where it matters
Where a leak has been running for a while, the wet area under the membrane is usually much larger than the entry point, and in this humidity it does not dry out at all.
Write it down for the file
What leaked, what was found, what was done, and what remains. That record is what stops the same leak being rediscovered from scratch next year.
Insurance and the paperwork
Commercial policies differ far more than residential ones, and the interesting questions are usually about the contents and the business interruption rather than the roof itself. What helps in every case is dated documentation of the loss and of the emergency measures taken to limit it. The insurance section covers the general mechanics; your policy and your broker decide what applies to your building, and nothing here predicts a carrier's decision.
Water coming into a tenant space now?
Get in touchDo you work after hours?
Emergency work happens when the emergency does. What matters as much as the response is the triage on the phone: for some situations the right first action is containment inside the building and a proper assessment the next day, and saying so is more useful than sending someone onto a roof in a storm.
What happens after a regional storm, when everybody is calling?
After a named storm every roofing company in the region is oversubscribed on the same morning, and that is simply the truth of this coast. Containment inside the building carries more weight in that week than it does in any other, triage runs on who has water landing on people and equipment, and anybody promising an immediate permanent repair to every caller is promising something nobody can deliver.
Can you repair a roof in the rain?
Some repairs, on some systems, temporarily. A welded membrane patch needs a clean, dry surface to bond, so wet-weather work is usually containment and temporary protection, with the permanent repair made when the surface can be prepared properly.
We do not know who installed the roof or how old it is. Does that matter?
For the emergency, no. Afterwards, yes — establishing what is up there, its age and whether any warranty is live changes what the sensible repair is. It is also the first entry in a roof file.
Who deals with the ceiling and the contents?
Interior drying and restoration is a separate trade and it should start quickly, because wet insulation and soaked ceiling tiles do not recover. The roofing work and the interior work run in parallel.
All work is performed by insured local roofing professionals. Texas does not license roofing contractors at state level, so insurance, references and a written scope are what there is to check.