Commercial Roofing For Property Owners Nearby Christian Reformed Church
On a Sunday morning, just drive by Christian Reformed Church to see the parking lot overflow with cars. The roof, which sits atop the sanctuary and fellowship hall, gets battered every single year by the wind coming off the plains, by the January ice dams, and by July's blistering membrane-scorching temps. We've done work on commercial roofs across Mason City, and we know what to expect: No one calls to ask for repairs until a wet spot shows up on a ceiling tile.
This part of Mason City has older homes. Many of the buildings around Christian Reformed Church were built a few decades back and some are almost as old as the surrounding homes (the median age is estimated to be 1949). It matters for commercial roofing too, too. Some of the commercial flat roofs here were constructed using building materials no longer in use by roofers. When we show up on your job, we typically have to identify the old materials under the existing roof before we can tell you what you need to put on top of them.
When we say we specialize in commercial flat roofs and metal roofing, we mean it; you can count on that when you call our office for your needs near Christian Reformed Church. If you own property near the church, you're talking to the right team. If you're a homeowner three blocks over needing shingles replaced, we'll be straight with you, that's not our lane.
Property owners nearby typically face a few typical roofing challenges:
- Saturated water on some flat roofs built long ago and poorly pitched
- Failing flashings and seams around equipment and penetrations through roofs
- Wind and hail damage that doesn't get discovered until after a leak shows up
- Metal on outbuildings and additions needing inspection after 20 years
- Waterproofing needs for existing membrane systems to avoid an expensive replacement
Most people won't be open to this, but often commercial roofs in the neighborhoods close to Christian Reformed Church get repeatedly patched rather than getting the attention needed. And so a simple $400 patch job can turn into a $40,000 replacement. We prefer to tell you what needs doing and let you decide. It might need a simple fix. Or maybe it needs the more durable solution of TPO or a standing seam metal system instead of another patch.
The flashing around this roof might not be spotted at first. Water will have long entered the wall before you spot a wet spot. The roofs are old, so the insulation and deck under there is almost certainly from the original construction. We aren't guessing when we say this. It is what we find every time we take a roof apart near the church.
Should your property be near Christian Reformed Church, we know what roof it likely has, along with what it's dealing with, from wind to drainage. Not sales fluff. That's twenty-five years of ladders and shingles we didn't touch and flat roofs we did.
Driving from Christian Reformed Church to A1 Roofing Services
People living close to Christian Reformed Church have no difficulty traveling to 608 12th St NE. It is very close to Mason City and certainly not very far. David and his crew frequently travel between these two locations as they assess residential flat roofs and metal roofs for homes in this region that were originally constructed in about 1949 and are still standing.
You should be able to find us in the following manner:
- From the vicinity of the church, take a turn towards 12th St NE
- Drive on 12th St NE until you come to the NE quadrant of the community
- Find the address 608 12th St NE
There are no confusing turns, there are no detours through unfamiliar neighborhoods. Many contractors might exaggerate the difficulty of locating the destination, and charge you additional for mileage or an on-site consultation fee; we don't.
There is a chance you might never have to visit us at all. We will come to you for a roof assessment, whether the damage is from storm impact near the church or another issue. You should expect that with a commercial roof evaluation, or a residential project that involves a flat roof or metal roof. That being said, if you do choose to drive up the shop before an on-site consultation, the commute takes little time and the streets are simple enough to find.
We've had calls from neighbors in that area of Mason City regarding issues with flat roof soft areas, loose metal roof panels. We'll show up to inspect the building and determine next steps. We could provide you a free roof inspection right then. Maybe, we'll need to schedule a more comprehensive inspection for a day when the weather is more favorable.
As for the type of home, a fair amount of properties close to the church are owner-occupied, and the residents there live there for many years. The damage of the roof would mean far more than the cost of painting. We don't go to the site to sell you a service that you don't require.
The trip length between the two locations isn't the issue. It's just a matter of getting a professional to your roof to assess and minimize damage.
Not paying attention to that soft spot now can end up costing you a fortune in the long run.
Roof Considerations for 1949 Buildings
Most of the houses we work on around Christian Reformed Church were built in 1949, which is the median year in the tract. You can spot this right away on the roof deck. There are no cookie-cutter homes here, just plank decking. You'll also see the kind of ventilation setups that made sense 75 years ago and don't anymore, along with the various roof lines that have been covered over and covered over and covered over by whoever was cheapest at the time.
We have a good idea of what David's team will find beneath the surface of those decks before we even pull a permit. This is not a flex; it's the reality of working on the same streets for a long time.
What we often learn is that an aging 75-year-old roof deck fails not because of the material on the exterior; it fails because it was not designed for today's higher thermal standards or rooftop equipment. Over the years, this failure reveals itself as sagging deck, soft spots underfoot, or leaks through seams no one even knew to inspect.
On the commercial side, near the church, we have mostly flat roofs, including older brick commercial buildings, storefronts for small businesses, and an assortment of other buildings that used to be some other use. Most of those roofs use either TPO or EPDM because that material is good at withstanding the wide temperature swing that Mason City experiences. However, on buildings like this, putting a new membrane over the structure without considering the condition of the deck will result in a callback call in a couple years.
This is especially true in an area like ours. About 58% of homes in the tract are owner-occupied, with the balance being rentals. As you can imagine, this changes how the roof gets treated. Owners, of course, have a greater incentive to discover leaks earlier because they're the ones staying up at night worrying about it. With rental homes, we often find out about leaks later, sometimes after the damage has gotten into the roof deck and insulation below it.
A typical situation in this neighborhood would be an older flat roofed commercial building next to the church. A single-ply membrane from a few decades ago. The insulation below has absorbed water and it's compressed and the tenant says it's musty. They think it's a HVAC issue, but in reality, the roof deck is full of water like a sponge under a single-ply membrane that surrendered to the elements years ago.
We've never done shingling and that will not change. We don't even want to be around shingles, but on the flat roofs or the metal roofing of buildings built in 1949, we know what to look for. Roof deck waterproofing. Roof leak detection before it becomes a bigger situation. Standing seam metal roofing on flat roofs that have been struggling for too long.
The buildings around Christian Reformed Church have personality, but they also have decades worth of decisions layered onto the roof. We like it that way.