Built-Up Roofing

Why BUR Earned Its Reputation

• Redundancy. Three, four or five plies, so a breach in one is not a leak
• The toughest surface to walk in commercial roofing
• Gravel shields the asphalt from the UV that degrades it fastest

Why We Rarely Install It New

• Weight, which constrains recover options later
• Hot kettles, meaning smoke, odor and a real safety profile near occupied buildings
• Slow to install compared with single ply
• Gravel makes leaks genuinely hard to find
• No reflectivity in a market where cooling load matters

For most new low slope work, TPO, PVC or modified bitumen gives comparable performance at less weight and cost.

If You Already Have One

The core cut decides. Maintain and repair, which these roofs reward. Restore with a compatible coating over a sound dry assembly. Or tear off and replace once the insulation is saturated or two roofs are already up there.

Do not let anyone replace a working BUR roof without showing you core cuts.

Old Buildings Move, And The Roof Feels It

A lot of the gravel roofs left in the Metroplex sit on buildings put up decades ago on expansive clay. That soil swells through a wet spring and shrinks through a dry August, and the structure above it moves a little every year. Long tilt wall and masonry buildings show it at the parapets and at the joint between the original structure and any addition.

On a multi ply asphalt roof that movement is what opens things up. Base flashing tears at the wall. A crack telegraphs through the plies along a line you can follow with your eye once the gravel is swept. Drains stop being the low point because one corner of the building settled. Before we scope repairs on an older BUR roof we look at the perimeter and the interior for matching evidence, since patching a split that the building is going to reopen next summer is money spent twice.