Commercial insulation in Watsonville CA - a roof that keeps the building comfortable

Most of these calls come from a property manager or owner whose top floor runs hot, whose tenants complain about drafts, or whose roofer just said a replacement is due. The price moves with the size of the roof, how the insulation goes on, and whether the doorways, the flashing or the structure need work to make room for it. The schedule turns on permits and inspections, the weather, and whether we're working alongside a reroof. We check with the city before anything starts, and I'll write up your figure after I've looked at the building in person.

I start on the roof before we price anything. I check that the access doors and roof edges have room for the added height, because a thicker roof can leave a door that won't clear, or flashing, the metal that seals the joints, that has to be raised. I also make sure the structure can carry any added weight, since the ballast or pavers that hold some roofs down add up quickly. That's prep, the same as setting up your station in a kitchen before service, and it decides what goes into the estimate. Once you say go, our crew makes the repairs, seals the gaps where air gets through, puts the insulation in and cleans up as we go. I check the work before we call it done.

Some buildings need work below the roof too. If the building sits over a crawl space, we can put down a crawl space vapor barrier while we're there. For rooms that run cold or hold damp air, vapor barrier installation keeps moisture from working into the new insulation.

In Watsonville, the city's Building Division reviews construction plans against the Building and Fire Codes and inspects buildings while the work is underway. We find out whether your job needs a permit by checking with the city or county office that covers your address. When it does, we pull the permit and line up the inspections. The city lists Watsonville in Climate Zone 4 under the state energy code, which is the state's rules for building energy use, and that's the zone your job gets planned for. If old roofing or insulation comes off, the city expects contractors to keep at least 65 percent of construction and demolition material out of the landfill, so we plan the tear-off and haul-away around that.

Near the bay the air stays damp much of the year, and on older flat-roofed shops and metal buildings we often find wet or crushed insulation. We pull that out before anything new goes down, because fresh material over a wet layer just traps the problem. We're based in Watsonville and see the same kinds of buildings on jobs in Salinas, Gilroy and plenty of the cities around them.