Built-up roofing (BUR) installation and assessment for Indianapolis commercial buildings — multi-ply asphalt and coal tar pitch systems with gravel surfacing and IECC 2021 Climate Zone 5A insulation.
What defines us is not only the scale of our work but the people who make it possible.
Every roof we build reflects care, skill, and pride from a team that treats each project like their own.
At Commercial Roofers Indianapolis, roofing is about people as much as it is about performance. Our full-time, in-house workforce is the most certified team under one roof in Indiana and among the top in the nation.
Our roofers are trained and supported to do their best. Many have been with us for decades, and several families now have multiple generations working side by side.
Nearly a century later, Commercial Roofers Indianapolis is a commercial roofing operation names in commercial roofing, combining our process, innovation, and a people-first approach to deliver excellence on every job.
The business expands from residential to commercial roofing, establishing a strong reputation for quality and reliability across Pennsylvania.
The second generation brings the company’s expertise to Texas, officially founding Commercial Roofers Indianapolis and completing its first major project: the airport terminal at Indianapolis.
1990s
Commercial Roofers Indianapolis grows into a large-scale commercial contractor, delivering projects for warehouses, industrial facilities, and corporate developments across the region.
We are the only full service commercial roofing contractor that safely delivers a quality, on time roof by Commercial Roofers Indianapolis values driven employees, at a competitive price.
To is a commercial roofing operation commercial roofing company by combining documentation discipline with modern operational excellence and innovation in single-ply roofing and architectural metal systems.
Our investment in continuing education and dual certifications keeps our workforce at the top of their craft. That’s why clients trust Commercial Roofers Indianapolis for complex commercial builds, re-roofing, and maintenance projects, knowing the work will always be done right.
Built-up roofing — multi-ply asphalt systems with gravel surfacing — is still the right specification for certain Indianapolis commercial buildings and remains the dominant system on the older Marion County commercial inventory. We install, repair, and assess BUR systems and provide honest recover-versus-replace analysis on aging assemblies.
Built-up roofing is the oldest continuously used commercial flat-roof system in Indianapolis, and the city's industrial and institutional building stock carries BUR systems that date to the 1960s through 1990s. The Eli Lilly campus, older IU Health facilities, the original Marion County courthouse annex buildings, and the manufacturing inventory along Harding Street and South Tibbs Avenue all have BUR systems in various stages of the aging cycle.
Modern BUR — hot-mopped asphalt felts with aggregate surfacing — remains a viable specification for certain Indianapolis applications: buildings with existing BUR inventory where tear-off would require asbestos abatement on older felt material, buildings with unusually heavy rooftop traffic where the multi-ply redundancy of BUR is an asset, and buildings where the owner's capital horizon favors a 25-to-30-year service life with a higher initial cost over a single-ply system with a lower initial cost and 20-year service life.
The polar vortex events of 2014 and 2019 exposed a specific failure mode in older Indianapolis BUR systems: aggregate-surfaced built-up roofing without vapor retarders on buildings with interior humidity loads. The sustained -13°F temperatures drove moisture through unprotected insulation, which froze inside the assembly, expanded, and delaminated the felts from the insulation. Buildings we inspected in the spring of 2014 and 2020 with this failure pattern required full tear-off — no recover was possible because the insulation and often the deck corrosion required full remediation.
A commercial BUR system in Indianapolis is built as follows: base sheet mechanically attached to the insulation substrate, three or four plies of asphalt-saturated felt hot-mopped in sequence, aggregate surfacing (typically pea gravel or crushed stone) embedded in the flood coat of hot asphalt. The aggregate surfacing provides UV protection for the asphalt, ballast against wind uplift, and a walkable surface for rooftop maintenance without dedicated walkpads.
Kettle operation and hot-mopping require a fire watch and, in Marion County, a hot-work permit from the building's fire authority. We obtain these permits as standard procedure. The kettle temperature is maintained in the manufacturer's specified range — typically 425°F to 475°F — and documented in the project log for the quality record.
Insulation under BUR systems follows the same IECC 2021 Climate Zone 5A R-30 effective requirement as all other commercial roof systems in Indianapolis. The vapor retarder is specified on the warm side of the insulation per ASHRAE 90.1 for buildings with elevated interior humidity loads. This detail is particularly important in older Indianapolis manufacturing buildings where the existing BUR was installed before energy code vapor control requirements were enforced.
The recover-versus-replace analysis on an aging Indianapolis BUR system starts with moisture cores at five to ten representative locations across the roof. If cores show saturation in more than 20% of the insulation area, replacement is the correct scope — recovering over wet insulation in Indianapolis winters allows moisture to freeze, expand, and delaminate the new system within two to three seasons.
Asbestos assessment is required before coring or tear-off on any BUR system installed before approximately 1981 in Indianapolis. Older asphalt felt occasionally contains asbestos fibers in the backing material. We require a pre-project asbestos test on all pre-1981 BUR systems before we write a tear-off scope. If asbestos is present, the tear-off requires licensed abatement work in addition to roofing work — a cost and schedule factor that goes into the capital analysis before contract.
Coal tar pitch BUR — an older formulation that uses coal tar derivatives instead of asphalt — appears on some pre-1970s Indianapolis commercial and institutional buildings. Coal tar pitch is self-healing at warm temperatures (the pitch flows to seal minor surface cracks) but produces hazardous fumes during hot-mopping that require specialized worker protection and fire watch protocols beyond standard asphalt BUR procedure.
Coal tar pitch systems are no longer installed new in Indianapolis or most other markets — the material is not available from US manufacturers for new construction. Assessment of existing coal tar systems on older Indianapolis institutional buildings is part of our inspection scope for buildings where we suspect this material is present.
Our project managers will walk the roof, pull moisture cores, assess asbestos risk on pre-1981 systems, and deliver a written scope with recover-versus-replace analysis.
Tell us about the building and the roof problem. We'll document it and put a plan in writing — with an honest repair-vs-replace recommendation and no upsell pressure.
Get a Roof Assessment →