Commercial Roof Repair Across the Five Boroughs

Keystone Commercial Roofing Contractors has been repairing, maintaining, and installing roofs on commercial and institutional buildings across New York since 2004. We work exclusively on commercial property (offices, retail, mixed-use buildings, warehouses, institutional, and government facilities) and do not take on residential work.

$2M general liability insurance

MBE, DBE and LBE certified

OSHA-compliant safety practices

Commercial roofing since 2004

Common Commercial Roof Problems We Repair

These are the failures we see on the systems we repair: TPO, PVC, EPDM, built-up and modified bitumen. Each can allow water into the building, but the underlying cause and repair are different. 

Failed seams and laps

Heat welds and adhesive seams weaken with age, foot traffic and thermal movement. Once one lets go, water tracks sideways under the membrane before it shows up on the ceiling below. That's why a stain inside the building often sits nowhere near the opening on the roof.

Flashing and parapet detail

Flashing at parapets, curbs and roof edges takes more movement and weather than the field of the roof. When it pulls away or cracks, water gets behind it and into the wall assembly, not just the deck.

Punctures and membrane damage

HVAC service, foot traffic, dropped tools and equipment installs all puncture membranes. A half-inch tear finds water just as fast as a large one.

Blisters, splits and shrinkage

Blisters form when trapped moisture or air expands with heat. Splits and shrinkage show up on older membranes at seams, corners and anywhere the material is stretched tight.

Failed penetrations and curbs

Every pipe, vent, drain and piece of rooftop equipment is sealed separately. Old sealant cracks, curb flashing lifts, and pitch pans shrink away from whatever they were sealing.

How We Repair Commercial Roof Damage

Each failure above gets a specific fix, not a generic patch. Here’s what the repair actually involves. 

Seam and lap repair

We cut back to sound material, then re-seal or re-weld the section and tie it into the surrounding membrane.

Flashing replacement

Failed flashing at parapets, curbs and edges is cut back to sound material, replaced, and tied into the membrane. A bead of sealant over a lifted edge isn’t a repair. 

Drainage correction

We trace ponding to its cause first, whether that’s a blocked drain, an undersized one, or a low spot in the deck, before we touch anything.

Membrane patching and section replacement

Small damage gets a matching patch; larger failed sections are cut out and replaced.

Wet insulation removal

Saturated insulation comes out and is replaced before new membrane goes down.

Sealing penetrations

Penetrations are re-sealed and re-flashed at the base, not just recaulked over the old failure. 

Repair or Replace?

Every failure does not mean a new roof. Here’s how we tell the difference.

When repair is the right call

The problem is isolated: one or two failed seams, a section of damaged flashing, or one area of wet insulation, and the rest of a well-maintained low-slope roof is sound. In that case, the failure can usually be repaired without replacing the whole roof.

When a roof is past repair

Multiple systems are failing at once, the membrane is brittle across large areas rather than at one seam, or the roof already carries more patches than original material. These conditions can indicate that another patch is no longer a sensible long-term repair, particularly when deterioration is widespread. At that point, the real question is when a roof is past repair.

What we tell you either way

We inspect before we quote, assessing the extent of the damage before recommending a fix or a replacement, and we tell you which category your roof is actually in. A repair fixes what has already failed. A maintenance plan is about keeping it from happening again on the rest of the roof.

A Recent Repair

E 124th St, East Harlem, Manhattan

A 12-year-old TPO roof was leaking into a second-floor unit after every heavy rain. Inspection traced it to failed seams along the north parapet, not the penetration the owner suspected. We cut back and re-welded roughly 80 linear feet of seam and replaced the adjacent flashing.

Sunset Park, Brooklyn

A modified bitumen roof on a warehouse was ponding water for days after every rain. The drains were clear, so the cause was a low spot where the deck had settled over the years, not the drains themselves. We built up the substrate to correct the slope and re-flashed the surrounding membrane. The area now drains within hours of a storm.

Repairs Across New York

We provide commercial roof repair across New York City: Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, Westchester County and Nassau County. See our pages on roof repair in Brooklyn and roof repair in the Bronx for how that looks locally. Every location we serve gets the same crews and the same standard of work.

Repair on an occupied commercial building has its own logistics. That means roof access without disrupting the business underneath, staging materials with no ground-level yard, and scheduling around a loading dock or freight elevator that belongs to someone else. We coordinate all of that before the first tool goes up.

Repair is one part of our work as commercial roofing contractors in NYC, and all our services are listed on one page. 

FAQs

How do I know if my roof needs repair or replacement?

Isolated problem, sound roof otherwise: repair. Failures in multiple places, or membrane deteriorating broadly: replacement. We confirm which after we’ve actually looked. 

This page covers scheduled repair: problems you can describe and wait a day or two on. If water is actively coming through right now, use the emergency link at the top of this page instead.

Yes. We carry $2 million in general liability coverage, and our crews follow OSHA safety standards. That matters more on repair work than on most jobs, since it’s often work at height over a sidewalk or lot still in use.

We repair single-ply membranes including TPO, PVC and EPDM, as well as built-up and modified bitumen systems. If you’re not sure what’s on your roof, send a photo and the building address.

Repair cost depends on the roofing system, the extent of the damage and roof access (occupied building vs. vacant, loading dock vs. street level). A single failed seam repair is a very different job from a section of wet insulation removal. We give a firm number after inspection, at no charge for the look. 

Tell Us What's Failing

Describe what you’re seeing, or send a photo and the building address. Whether it’s a failed seam like East Harlem or a drainage fix like Sunset Park, we’ll tell you what it needs and what it costs to fix it. Every job is backed by $2 million in general liability coverage, and we can provide our MBE, DBE and LBE certification documentation when a project requires it.