Port of Houston Firehouse: 18,000 SF and 10-Foot Walls, All in One System

The challenge

This is an emergency services building on the Houston Ship Channel. It cannot go out of service, and it sits in about the most aggressive environment a roof can be asked to survive: heat, humidity, salt air and industrial exposure, year round.

The roof itself is single-ply, and it is surrounded by parapet walls that run about ten feet tall. Roughly 95% of the leaks on a building like this happen on the roof — that is where the water sits and that is where the failures are — but the walls are where the work is. Ten feet of vertical surface is a long run of detail to execute off a ladder, and these walls also carry a row of standing poles that each had to be sealed and secured individually, with crews working in pairs to do it safely.

The arithmetic of the job ended up inverted: those wall and pole details took our crews longer to finish than the whole 18,000 square feet of roof field.

What we did

We restored the roof and the walls as one assembly. The fluid-applied system goes over the existing single-ply membrane and continues straight up the full height of the parapets, so the horizontal-to-vertical transition is no longer a joint between two different materials — it is the same continuous membrane turning a corner.

Every curb, drain, vent and equipment support on the deck was detailed into that same system. Nothing on this roof is tied in with a separate patch.

Why it matters

The firehouse stayed operational throughout. There was no tear-off, no open deck and no period where the building was relying on temporary protection.

Just as important, the single-ply membrane the owner already paid for stayed in service as part of the assembly rather than going to a landfill. It has a new, seamless, UV-stable surface over it, and the detail that would have failed first is now the strongest part of the roof.

One note on upkeep: a reflective roof only keeps saving energy while it stays clean. Ship Channel air is not kind to a white surface, so plan on washing the roof every four to five years to hold it at maximum reflectivity and efficiency.

Have a roof like this one?

Harvest restores commercial roofs across the Houston area — fluid-applied roofing and waterproofing over metal, single ply, modified bitumen and gravel-surfaced built-up systems. If your roof is aging and you want to know what it actually needs, we will come look at it.

Harvest · (281) 259-7099 · office@teamhis.com