The commercial and industrial building stock in Detroit is old, heavy and worth saving. Brick and timber warehouses in Milwaukee Junction, the market buildings in Eastern Market, the loft conversions in and around Lafayette Park and 48207, the storefronts along the avenues — nearly all of them have a low-slope roof, a tall masonry parapet, and a built-up assembly that has been repaired for sixty years. Restoring those roofs is a different job than roofing a new building in the suburbs.
Why Tear-Off Is the Wrong First Answer Here
A tear-off on an urban Detroit building means staging dumpsters on a street with no setback, hauling decades of saturated built-up roofing through a neighborhood, and leaving an old deck open to Michigan weather. It also means finding out mid-project what condition a 1920s plank or concrete deck is actually in.
Recovering with sprayed polyurethane foam avoids all of that. We spud and clean the surface, cut out and replace the wet sections, and spray a seamless insulating layer over the remainder. Nothing leaves the site except the material that genuinely had to go.
Parapets, Coping and the Roof-to-Wall Joint
On these buildings the field of the roof is rarely the problem. The leaks come from the perimeter: deteriorated coping stone or metal, failed through-wall flashing, and membrane terminations that pulled away from the masonry. A fluid-applied system runs continuously from the deck up and over the parapet with no seam, no termination bar and no fastener at the most active joint on the building. Where the masonry itself needs attention above the roof line, we coordinate that work rather than roofing over a problem.
Insulation Comes With the Roof
Most pre-war Detroit commercial buildings have no roof insulation whatsoever — the deck is the ceiling. Because SPF is both waterproofing and insulation, restoring the roof puts real R-value into a building that has never had any. On a loft conversion that is the difference between a building that is expensive to heat and one that is not. More on the system itself: polyurethane roofing and commercial roof coatings. For interior and residential work, see Detroit insulation.
Where We Work
Citywide, including 48207 and the Eastern Market, Lafayette Park and Elmwood Park areas, Milwaukee Junction, Corktown, Southwest Detroit, the New Center area and the industrial riverfront. Downriver work is on our River Rouge page; western Wayne County on our Livonia page.
Detroit Flat Roofing FAQs
Can you re-roof an older Detroit warehouse without a tear-off?
Usually yes. Most of these buildings carry a built-up tar and gravel roof, sometimes with a modified bitumen cap sheet over it. If the deck is structurally sound and the assembly is not saturated, we spud the loose gravel, replace wet insulation, and spray foam over the top. That avoids hauling decades of built-up roofing off a building in a tight urban site with no place to stage a dumpster.
What about parapet walls and coping?
That is where these roofs leak. Detroit's older commercial and industrial buildings have tall masonry parapets with deteriorated coping and through-wall flashing. A sprayed system carries continuously up the parapet with no termination bar or seam at the base, which removes the single most common leak path on this building type. Masonry repair above the roof line is coordinated separately where needed.
Do you work on loft and mixed-use conversions?
Yes. Conversions in Eastern Market, Milwaukee Junction, Corktown and the areas around Lafayette Park often need the roof done as part of the project, and getting insulation into the roof assembly is much easier from above than trying to fur down the ceilings inside a loft you are trying to sell as loft space.
Do you handle roof insulation as part of the job?
Always — the foam is the insulation. On a 1920s warehouse with a concrete or wood plank deck and no insulation at all, that alone changes the building's heating economics. See our Detroit insulation page for the interior side.