Commercial Roofing
Protecting East Bay Businesses From the Top Down

Commercial Roofing Is Its Own Business

If you're a property manager, HOA board member, or owner-operator, you already know this, commercial roofing isn't just a bigger residential roof. It's a completely different business. The math is different, the stakeholders are different, and the priorities are different. A homeowner wants the prettiest shingle in their HOA-approved color palette. A property manager wants to know the 20-year life-cycle cost, the insurance implications, and whether the install can happen without displacing tenants for a week. Those are not the same conversation.

Honest reality: commercial roofing is about life-cycle cost and minimizing tenant disruption, not shingle brand flexing. We've been doing commercial and multi-family work in the East Bay since 1988, and we've written capital plans for buildings that were new when I was in high school. The buildings that last are the ones where somebody made good decisions about maintenance, phasing, and material selection years before they became problems.

What Commercial Roofing Covers

Commercial roofing is a broad category. Under our C-39 license we handle everything from a 4-unit apartment building in Richmond to a 50,000 sq ft warehouse in Hayward. The property types we work on most often:

• Apartment complexes and multi-family, 4-plexes up to 100-unit garden-style properties.
• HOA common-area roofs, condos, townhouses, and carport structures where the board is the decision-maker.
• Retail centers and standalone retail, strip malls, anchor stores, restaurant pads.
• Office buildings, from single-tenant medical offices to multi-story Class B commercial.
• Industrial and warehouse, distribution, light manufacturing, self-storage.
• Restaurants and food service, with particular attention to grease exhaust and hood curb detailing.
• Medical and dental offices, where tenant disruption tolerance is close to zero.
• Churches, schools, and community buildings, often with the tightest budgets and the most complex politics.

When a Commercial Re-Roof Makes Sense

A commercial roof rarely fails all at once. What usually happens is a slow degradation, seam shrinkage, failed flashings, ponding water that's gotten worse, insulation that's waterlogged in sections. The question isn't "is it leaking?" but "what's the right moment to stop patching and start planning?" We look at the core samples, the warranty remaining, the energy performance, and the capital planning cycle, and we'll tell you straight whether you're better off maintaining for another 3 to 5 years or budgeting a full replacement for the next fiscal cycle.

We also do roof recovers, installing a new membrane over the existing one without a tear-off, when the existing assembly is sound and dry. Under CBC Chapter 15 you can have a maximum of two roof coverings, so if there's already been one recover, the next round has to be a full tear-off. That's a cost and timing difference worth knowing about early.

Brands and Product Lines We Install

For commercial work, we stock and install systems from every major single-ply, modified bitumen, and coating manufacturer:

• Firestone/Holcim. UltraPly TPO, RubberGard EPDM, AP Torchdown modified bitumen, and ISO 95+ GL polyiso insulation.
• GAF Commercial, EverGuard TPO, EverGuard PVC, and Ruberoid modified bitumen. We write Golden Pledge warranties on GAF systems as a GAF Master Elite contractor.
• Carlisle SynTec, Sure-Weld TPO, Sure-Seal EPDM, Sure-Flex PVC. Carlisle's Syntec warranty is one of the best in the industry.
• Johns Manville, JM TPO, EPDM, PVC, and DynaGlas/DynaWeld modified bitumen. Single-source Peak Advantage warranty covering insulation through membrane.
• Versico — VersiWeld TPO, VersiGard EPDM, VersiFlex PVC.
• Henry Company, Blueskin self-adhered products, DuraPro coatings, 587 roof cement.
• Soprema — SOPRALENE and SOPRASMART SBS modified bitumen.
• Coatings: Henry 587, GE silicone, Versiflex acrylic, GAF HydroStop. For roofs where a recover coating can extend service life 10 to 15 years without a full tear-off.

Commercial Systems, Which One for Which Building

TPO, our default commercial recommendation. Hits Title 24 cool-roof compliance automatically. Heat-welded seams. Best for office parks, retail, multi-family, and anything with air conditioning. 60 or 80-mil over tapered polyiso.

EPDM — longest field life of any single-ply. Best for warehouses, industrial, buildings with heavy rooftop equipment, and shaded sites where cool roof doesn't matter.

PVC — chemically resistant beyond TPO. Best for restaurant rows, auto shops, and any building with rooftop grease or industrial exhaust. White and Title 24 compliant out of the roll.

Modified bitumen (SBS/APP), torch-applied or cold-adhered multi-ply. Best for smaller commercial flat roofs, restaurants, and buildings where patching will be the primary repair strategy.

Built-up roofing (BUR), the original commercial flat-roof system. Still the toughest when maximum puncture and impact resistance matters, but heavy and slow to install. We work on existing BUR more than we install new.

Standing seam metal, 24-gauge galvalume or aluminum panels, concealed fasteners. Best for warehouses, manufacturing, and anywhere architectural appearance matters. 40-year finish warranties.

Coatings (Henry, GE, Versiflex, HydroStop), spray or roller-applied over existing sound membrane. Best for extending the life of an older roof without a full replacement. Usually $2 to $5 per sq ft installed.

The Installation Process

Commercial jobs follow a structured sequence that's different from residential work. Here's how it goes:

1. Site survey and core samples. We cut small 2x2 samples through the existing roof to see what's actually in the stack. Insulation type, thickness, moisture content, number of existing layers. This is non-negotiable on any commercial project, we've seen too many jobs where the "existing" roof turned out to have three hidden layers of BUR underneath.
2. Engineered specification. Matching the right system to your building, occupancy, and code requirements.
3. Written proposal with scope, materials, timeline, phasing plan, and warranty details.
4. Pre-construction meeting with property management, HVAC contractors, tenants, and anyone else who's going to be affected.
5. Permits pulled. CA #987654 C-39 on every application.
6. Installation with a dedicated project super on site every day, daily photo progress reports, and weather contingency built in.
7. Leak test, final inspection, warranty registration, and as-built documentation. Every commercial job leaves behind a clean paperwork trail for the property file.

Code Requirements

Commercial roofing falls under California Building Code Chapter 15 (CBC 1505 for fire classification, CBC 1507 for material-specific requirements), along with CRC Chapter 9 for residential-over-commercial mixed-use buildings. Title 24 Part 6 mandates cool-roof compliance on almost every commercial low-slope roof over conditioned space. OSHA fall protection requirements under 29 CFR 1926.501 apply to every job over 6 feet, we run written fall protection plans on every commercial project. ADA requirements affect rooftop access paths for equipment service. Local fire code dictates hot-work permits and fire watch for any torch application. Building occupancy classification (B, M, R, F, S, etc.) determines which sections of code apply, which is why we'll sometimes need occupancy documentation before we can write a final proposal.

Pricing and Timeline

Commercial roofing runs $500 to $1,800 per square installed, depending on system, access, complexity, and phasing requirements. A typical 10,000 sq ft retail TPO job runs $65,000 to $120,000. A 30,000 sq ft warehouse EPDM runs $180,000 to $320,000. A 50,000 sq ft manufacturing building in phased sections can run $400,000-plus. These numbers are real, they reflect proper insulation, cover board, quality membrane, and fully detailed flashings. If you're getting a quote that's dramatically below this range, ask what's missing.

Timelines depend entirely on phasing. A straightforward single-section job is about a week per 10,000 sq ft. A phased occupied-building replacement can stretch that to 3 or 4 weeks because we're working around tenant operations. We do nights, weekends, and section-by-section sequencing whenever the building can't shut down.

East Bay Cities Where We Do Commercial Work

We work across every East Bay city, but the bulk of our commercial volume is concentrated in:

• Emeryville, commercial, multi-family, and live-work lofts.
• Downtown and West Oakland, retail, multi-family, and older industrial conversions.
• Downtown Berkeley — commercial blocks, university-adjacent retail.
• Richmond and San Pablo — industrial, warehouse, and older multi-family.
• Downtown Walnut Creek, Pleasant Hill, and Concord — retail centers, medical offices, HOA common areas.
• Pleasanton, San Ramon, and Dublin — office parks and multi-tenant commercial.
• Fremont, Hayward, and Union City — warehouse, light manufacturing, and multi-family.
• Livermore and Brentwood — commercial, industrial, and agricultural structures.

Frequently Asked Questions

Ready to Talk About Your Commercial Roof

If you're a property manager, HOA board member, owner-operator, or facility director dealing with a commercial roof — whether it's a 4-unit in Richmond or a 50,000 sq ft warehouse in Hayward — call East Bay Roofers at (925) 722-4916. We'll come out, do core samples, put together a written capital plan, and give you an honest recommendation about whether you should be repairing, coating, recovering, or fully replacing. CA #987654 C-39, GAF Master Elite, CertainTeed SELECT ShingleMaster, 4.9/5 from 527 reviews, serving East Bay commercial and multi-family since 1988.