Roof Recover Systems - Recover vs. Replace

The recover-versus-replace decision is the most consequential scoping question on any aging San Antonio commercial flat roof. Get it right and the building owner either saves 40 to 50 percent of replacement capital (if recover qualifies) or avoids installing a warranted membrane over wet insulation that would void the warranty and fail within three to five years (if it does not). Get it wrong in either direction and the cost is real money.

San Antonio's commercial roof inventory is well into its second and third reroof cycles on the oldest stock. The downtown institutional and hospitality buildings built in the 1970s and 1980s - hotels along the Riverwalk, office towers near the Alamodome, the convention center district buildings - are now on second or third reroof cycles. The suburban office and industrial buildout of the 1990s along US-281, Loop 1604, and the IH-35 corridors is now approaching the 20 to 25-year mark, which is the recover decision window for well-maintained single-ply systems. The more recent construction near Brooks City Base on the Southeast Side and the Pearl District is still in its first maintenance cycle - too young to think about recover, but the right buildings to establish a documented baseline for the capital decision that will come.

We have no financial incentive to push replacement over recover or recover over replacement. A recover project on a 100,000 square foot San Antonio warehouse might run $7 to $10 per square foot installed, versus $13 to $16 per square foot for full replacement. If recover is the honest scope, we scope it. If the insulation is wet, we scope replacement - because covering wet insulation does not dry it out.