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Commercial Roofing & Waterproofing in Wisconsin
Protecting Wisconsin commercial buildings from snow, ice, moisture, and temperature extremes with durable roofing and preventive maintenance solutions.
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Cold-Climate Roofs Fail From the Inside Out
In a warm climate, a roof fails from what hits it. In Wisconsin it usually fails from what's happening inside the assembly, and by the time it shows up as a leak the damage is years old.
Vapor drive is the one most owners never hear about. Warm, moist interior air pushes outward through the assembly all winter and condenses when it reaches a cold surface. If the vapor retarder is missing or on the wrong side, the roof accumulates water from inside the building with no storm involved — degrading insulation, corroding the deck, and staying invisible until something fails structurally. This is the most common cold-climate assembly failure there is.
Ice damming is a thermal problem, not a roofing defect. Heat escaping through thermal bridges and insulation gaps melts snow, the meltwater runs to a colder edge and refreezes, and water backs up under the assembly. Replacing the membrane over an unaddressed thermal envelope buys you the same ice dams and a newer roof. The fix lives in the insulation and air barrier.
Snow load is structural. Wisconsin's ground snow loads are high, and drift accumulation at parapets, roof-level changes, and mechanical screens concentrates weight well above the field average. Any reroof that adds weight or changes where drift collects is a structural question answered before the spec is written.
Lake effect changes the math near the shore. Buildings along Lake Michigan and Superior take heavier accumulation and harder wind loading than the same building inland, which shifts both the drift analysis and the perimeter attachment schedule.
What Is AVID?
AVID Roofing & Waterproofing is a commercial operator with more than $300 million installed over its leadership's careers. 205 combined years of leadership and field supervision, every bit of it earned in the field — installer, foreman, estimator, system designer — before anyone here ran anything. Every project is assigned to and fully supervised by a project manager whose name you'll know by the end of the first walk, and who sends you a written report every day the job is open.
We're manufacturer-certified with Sika, Siplast, Garland, Johns Manville, and FiberTite, and every system goes in to manufacturer specification.
Distance doesn't change the accountability structure. On a building in Milwaukee or Green Bay you get the same named project manager, the same daily written report, and the same core-cut assessment before anyone quotes a number. Most owners who've managed out-of-state roof work have had the opposite experience — a good first meeting, then a crew they never met and a superintendent they can't reach. That's the problem this company was built to solve.
What We Do In Wisconsin
Commercial roofing. 60-mil TPO, PVC, EPDM, modified bitumen, and standing-seam metal systems installed to manufacturer specifications on buildings that remain open during the work.
Design-build reroof. Assessment, drawings, submittals, and installation under one contract. No consultant fee stacked on top of the install, and one warranty covering the full assembly instead of a finger-pointing match between the designer and the installer when something leaks.
Architectural sheet metal. Copings, fascia, edge metal, and through-wall flashings fabricated in-house to ES-1 wind uplift standards. Edge metal is where most North Texas roofs fail first — and in a corridor that takes hail nearly every spring, that detail is the difference between a repair and a claim.
Waterproofing and restoration. Water doesn't only come through the roof. Tilt-wall joints, window perimeters, plaza decks, parking structures, below-grade walls — the other half of the envelope.
Roof asset management. Biannual GPS-tagged inspections, a multi-year capital plan, and 72-hour storm assessments on covered properties. Deferred maintenance isn't saving money. It's scheduling a bigger bill without telling you the date.
24/7 emergency service.
Active leaks, storm damage, failed flashings. Temporary dry-in within four hours on storm-driven leaks, and the line is answered by a person authorized to dispatch.
Emergency Dispatch: 833-766-3003.
Who Hires Us in Wisconsin
Food processing, dairy, and cold storage. Wisconsin has one of the densest concentrations of food and dairy processing in the country, and refrigerated buildings are a discipline unto themselves. On a cold-storage envelope, the vapor drive runs from the outside in rather than the inside out, which reverses the location of the vapor retarder. Getting that wrong doesn't cause a leak—it causes the assembly to accumulate ice inside until it fails structurally. Work phases around shutdown windows, washdown schedules, and shift changes, with every section dried in at the end of every day.
Paper, packaging, and forest products. The Fox Valley and northern mill corridor. Process exhaust, steam, vibration, and heavy rooftop mechanical on buildings that run continuously. System selection matched to what's actually discharging above the membrane, not to the price point.
Manufacturing and heavy industry. The I-94 corridor through Milwaukee, Racine, and Kenosha. Large envelopes, older assemblies with decades of added rooftop equipment, and decks that weren't designed for what's sitting on them. Core cuts answer that question before the spec is written.
Multi-site owners and asset managers. A Wisconsin portfolio accumulates a winter's worth of damage every year, most of it invisible until spring. Roof asset management means biannual GPS-tagged inspections documented to one standard — the spring inspection timed to catch what the winter did — a condition history that builds, and a consolidated multi-year capital plan.
Healthcare and education. Hospital campuses across all metros, plus the UW system and the state technical colleges. ICRA-aware scheduling. Campus work is summer work, and in this climate, the summer window is the entire schedule rather than a preference.
Municipal and county. City halls, libraries, fire stations, and public works facilities. Procurement-ready scopes with system specifications, manufacturer certification documentation, and line-by-line pricing so they survive review in a public meeting.
Where We Work In Wisconsin
Milwaukee metro — Milwaukee, Waukesha, West Allis, Brookfield, Racine, Kenosha, and the I-94 industrial corridor.
- Madison and south central — Madison, Janesville, Beloit, Sun Prairie, Middleton, and the university and state government market.
- Fox Valley and Green Bay — Green Bay, Appleton, Oshkosh, Neenah, Fond du Lac, and the paper and packaging corridor.
- Western Wisconsin — Eau Claire, La Crosse, Chippewa Falls, and the I-94 and Mississippi River corridors.
- Northern Wisconsin — Wausau, Stevens Point, Superior, Rhinelander, and the forest products and industrial belt.
We take project and portfolio assignments statewide. National accounts run under master service agreements across 13 states.
Wisconsin Commercial Roofing Frequently Asked Questions:
Usually not, and this is the most expensive misunderstanding in cold-climate roofing. Ice dams come from heat escaping the building — thermal bridging, insulation gaps, air leakage at penetrations — melting snow that refreezes at a colder edge and backs water up under the assembly. A new membrane over the same thermal problem gives you the same ice dams and a newer roof. The assessment has to look at insulation continuity and air barrier performance, not just the surface. Sometimes the answer is a roof. Sometimes it's insulation and detailing, at a fraction of the cost.
Substantially. On a cold-storage building the vapor drive runs from the outside in rather than the inside out, which reverses where the vapor retarder belongs. Getting it wrong doesn't produce a leak — it produces ice accumulating inside the assembly until it fails structurally. Cold storage gets designed as its own problem, and any contractor treating it as a normal roof with extra insulation is going to cost you the envelope.
Yes. Cold-climate roofing requires careful attention to vapor-retarder placement, insulation continuity, air leakage, condensation control, snow loading, and freeze-thaw conditions. AVID evaluates these factors during the design process and documents the rationale for including each component in the proposed assembly. The roofing system is selected for the building and Wisconsin climate—not copied from a warm-weather specification.
Shorter than most owners plan for. Certain adhesives and membranes have minimum application temperatures that aren't negotiable, and installing outside them voids the manufacturer warranty — which defeats the purpose of buying a certified system. Emergency dry-in and most repairs happen year-round; full replacements get scheduled into the right window. Getting on a schedule early matters more here than almost anywhere we work, and we'll tell you plainly which category your project falls into rather than taking the job and hoping.