RoofingSouthwest OhioCincinnati

Finneytown School District Roofing Repairs 2026

The lower gym at Finneytown's Secondary Campus in Cincinnati has a new roof built to current Ohio Building Code and backed by a 40-year Carlisle warranty. Prodigy took the old roof down to the metal deck and rebuilt it: fully tapered insulation averaging R-31 so the roof drains instead of holding water, new drain sumps, a 90-mil EPDM membrane carried up and over the perimeter walls, and new edge metal and counter flashing. Finneytown Local School District bought it pre-bid through The Ohio Purchasing Council's unit price contract.

Gym roofs are large, flat and out of sight, which is why they are usually the last roof a district takes on. Finneytown Local School District took the lower gym at its Secondary Campus in Cincinnati down to the metal deck instead of covering it over, and the contract names the standard the new assembly answers to: current Ohio Building Code.

What goes back on is a fully tapered, glass-reinforced polyisocyanurate insulation package fastened to the deck at an average R-31, premanufactured drain sumps at every drain, and a Carlisle 90-mil EPDM membrane with six-inch factory-applied seam tape adhered over the top of it. The membrane is wrapped up and over the perimeter walls and locked down with new 24-gauge cleat and edge metal; wall details are finished with a sealed termination bar and metal counter flashing.

The electrical conduit that had been mounted to the lower roof's edge metal was removed and reset on rubber supports a few feet back from the edge. That is a small line in a large contract and it is the kind that decides whether a roofer working up there years from now has to dismantle the conduit to reach the perimeter.

The district's return on a tear-off is not only a dry gym. Tapered insulation means the roof drains rather than holds water, and the higher compressive strength of the board means traffic across the field of the roof does not slowly work the membrane loose from what is under it. The system carries a 40-year Carlisle warranty, and the job was bought through a pre-bid unit-price contract held with The Ohio Purchasing Council.

Rooftop equipment on rails beside the metal wall on the Finneytown school roof

Dome vents and ductwork across the new Finneytown roof surface

Brick parapet corner of the Finneytown roof during replacement

Technical Discussion

Building slope into a flat gym roof

The lower gym at Finneytown had a roof deck with no fall to it. Water landed, spread, and stayed, and a membrane that spends days at a time under a puddle ages at the puddle first. The new roof gives the deck a slope it never had, and the way that was done is worth reading before the next low-slope roof on any campus.

Roof section showing tapered polyisocyanurate insulation, averaging R-31 on 25 psi board, sloping from the roof edge down to a premanufactured drain sump over a flat metal deck, so water runs to the drain. — Figure 1 — A full replacement is the one chance to add insulation value and slope at the same time.

Slope comes from the insulation

A metal deck cannot be re-pitched, so the pitch is built above it. The new insulation package is fully tapered polyisocyanurate, boards cut so that each one is thicker on one edge than the other, laid so the finished surface falls toward the drains at about a quarter inch per foot. Averaged across the roof the package delivers R-31, which meets the current Ohio code for a new roof assembly on a building like this. The taper is a design, drawn from a survey of the deck and the drain locations, not something a crew works out on the roof.

The drains get a factory sump

Where the taper arrives at a drain it has to drop into a bowl, and the geometry of that bowl is where most tapered roofs go wrong. Cutting a sump in the field with a knife leaves high spots that hold water a foot from the drain. Premanufactured drain sumps, cut in a factory to a fixed slope and set around each drain, put the low point exactly at the outlet. The drain baskets were inspected and replaced where they were broken, since a missing basket is how a roof drain clogs.

The board has to carry foot traffic

Tapered insulation is only as good as its resistance to being crushed. A gym roof carries rooftop equipment and the technicians who service it, and a board that dents under a knee leaves a low spot that holds water and, in time, lets the membrane pull away from it. The insulation here is UL and FM approved at 25 psi compressive strength, and it is mechanically fastened to the deck rather than glued to whatever was there before.

Why this needed a full replacement

None of this was available under a recover. Laying a new membrane over the old assembly keeps the old slope, the old R-value and the old drains. Tearing off to the deck is what made the taper, the sumps and the insulation value possible, and Carlisle's warranty team inspects the finished roof before the 40-year warranty issues.

If a flat roof on your campus ponds, ask for a tapered insulation plan with the drain locations on it before you ask for a membrane price. The slope is the roof.

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