Ely Roofers carries out commercial roofing in Littleport and surrounding areas - and once the work is done, what you do next determines how long that roof actually lasts.
Call any time. Calls are answered day and night and passed straight to our roofers.
A new or refurbished commercial roof is a significant investment. Whether it is a single-ply membrane on a retail unit, an EPDM flat roof on a warehouse extension, or profiled metal sheeting on an agricultural building, the system will perform well if it is looked after and fail prematurely if it is not. The gap between a roof that lasts its full design life and one that needs attention after a few years is often not the quality of the installation - it is whether anyone maintained it.
Most commercial roof failures that could have been prevented come down to one of three things: blocked drainage, unchecked minor damage that grows into a major leak, or penetrations and fixings that were never inspected after the first year. None of these problems is expensive to catch early. All of them are expensive once they have caused water ingress.
Flat roofs and low-pitched roofs depend entirely on their drainage outlets and gutters to remove water. A leaf-blocked outlet on a flat commercial roof can cause ponding within hours in heavy rain. Ponding adds weight to the deck, accelerates membrane degradation, and finds its way through any small defect that might otherwise have gone unnoticed for years.
Gutters on commercial buildings in and around Littleport should be cleared at least twice a year - once in late autumn after leaf fall, and once in spring. If there are nearby trees, three times is more sensible. Flat roof drainage outlets should be checked at the same time, and any debris around the outlet collars removed by hand rather than washed down, which can cause blockages lower in the system.
On metal sheet roofs, gutters are equally important. Blocked gutters on a large agricultural building can overflow against the eaves, where the sheeting and fixings are most vulnerable to prolonged moisture. This is a common cause of premature corrosion in the eaves zone.
You do not need to get on the roof yourself to keep an eye on things - and in most cases you should not. A safe visual inspection from ground level, combined with a look at accessible gutters and downpipes from a ladder where safe to do so, will catch the majority of early warning signs.
From ground level, look for:
From inside the building, damp patches on ceilings or walls, condensation on structural steelwork, or a musty smell in areas that were previously dry are all worth investigating promptly rather than monitoring.
A professional roof inspection on a commercial building should ideally happen once a year, and always after any severe weather event - a storm, heavy snow, or periods of hard frost. Frost in particular can open up small cracks at lap joints and around fasteners on metal roofs, and the damage is not always visible until a subsequent wet spell reveals it as a leak.
A proper commercial roof inspection should cover:
The inspector should be able to show you or describe anything of concern rather than simply telling you the roof is fine. A written note of findings, even informal, gives you a baseline to compare against the following year.
The cost of small repairs done promptly is almost always a fraction of what it costs to deal with the same problem after water has entered the building. A lifted flashing that costs a couple of hundred pounds to re-fix can, left for a winter, allow enough moisture ingress to saturate the insulation layer and rot the deck beneath - turning a minor repair into a partial or full roof replacement.
If a visual check reveals anything that looks like a potential entry point for water, contact a roofer before the next sustained period of rain rather than after it. Commercial roof repairs are generally straightforward when caught early, and the scope of work is much easier to define before the damage spreads.
A simple maintenance log for a commercial roof is worth keeping, particularly if you manage the property for a landlord or intend to sell or relet the premises in future. Recording the date of any inspection, any work carried out, and the materials used gives you a history of the roof's maintenance that is useful both practically and for any due diligence process.
Note the date and nature of any repairs, who carried them out, and any findings from routine inspections. If a new roof system was installed, keep any product data sheets and the written specification from the contractor - these tell a future roofer exactly what system is in place and help avoid incompatible repair materials being applied later.
Different tasks suit different times of year. A rough seasonal schedule for a commercial flat roof or metal sheet roof might look like this:
Ely Roofers carries out maintenance inspections and planned repair work for commercial buildings in and around Littleport. If your roof has not been inspected in the past twelve months, or if you have noticed any early warning signs, call a roofer to arrange a site survey and ask for a clear report on what needs attention and what is holding up well.
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Call any time. Calls are answered day and night and passed straight to our roofers.
