Roofing & structure
Proactively detecting seen and unseen problems.
A commercial roof rarely fails all at once. Infrared shows which parts of it are already wet, so you repair the failed area instead of replacing the whole membrane.
Overview
How a roof survey works
Wet insulation holds heat differently from dry insulation. After a sunny day, a roof radiates its heat back to the sky — and the saturated areas, holding more thermal mass, stay warm longer. That temperature difference is what an infrared camera reads, and it maps the wet area rather than just the leak's exit point inside the building.
That distinction matters. Water enters at one place, tracks through the insulation, and drips somewhere else entirely. Chasing the ceiling stain almost never finds the breach.
Conditions
Why timing is not negotiable
A roof scan only works inside a real thermal window: enough solar loading during the day, a clear enough sky at night to radiate, dry surface, and low wind. Scan outside that window and you get a uniform grey image that proves nothing.
We schedule roof flights for conditions rather than for the calendar, and we will tell you honestly if a night is not going to produce usable data. A survey delivered on a bad night is worse than no survey, because it comes with a report that says everything is fine.
Coverage
Aerial, on a scale that matters
Commercial roofs run to hundreds of thousands of square feet. A walk-over with a handheld camera covers a fraction of that, slowly, and from an angle that hides as much as it shows. Aerial thermal imaging covers the entire membrane in a single pass and reveals saturation patterns — seams, penetrations, drains, parapets — that only make sense when you can see the whole roof at once.
It is also considerably safer than putting people on an aging roof at night.
Envelope
Beyond the roof
The same technique reads the rest of the building. Missing or compressed wall insulation, moisture behind cladding, air infiltration at joints and openings, and heat loss through structural penetrations all show as thermal patterns. For a building being acquired or an energy retrofit being scoped, that turns a general assessment into a specific list of defects with locations.
The outcome
What it saves
The commercial argument is straightforward: a targeted repair of the twelve percent of a roof that is actually wet costs a fraction of a full tear-off. And if the survey shows the saturation is widespread, you have the documentation to justify the replacement budget rather than arguing for it.
Findings are marked on a roof plan with images, so a roofing contractor can bid the repair from the report.
Get a roof surveyed
Tell us the roof area, the membrane type and whether you are chasing a known leak or establishing condition. We will quote it and find a workable weather window.