Commercial Project Types

Brewery & Distillery Roofing in Asheville, NC

Roofing for Asheville-area breweries and distilleries: tank curbs, steam and wash-down exposure, rooftop refrigeration loads, from Mills River to the South Slope.

Roofing Built for Asheville's Brewery Economy

Beer is a real industry here, not a marketing angle. Sierra Nevada's production campus in Mills River, the South Slope brewery cluster south of downtown, and the taproom strip along Haywood Road in West Asheville all put different demands on a roof than a standard warehouse does. We build our brewery scope around the equipment and the process, not merely the square footage.

Steam, Wash-Down, and What It Does to a Membrane

Brewhouse operations put more moisture into the air below a roof deck than most industrial tenants ever will. Kettle steam, CIP wash-down cycles, and fermentation off-gassing raise interior humidity in ways that push vapor up through the deck if the roof assembly does not have the right vapor retarder. We have seen recover jobs fail within a couple of seasons because nobody accounted for interior humidity load before specifying the assembly, and once that moisture gets trapped in insulation, R-value and adhesion both go.

Exterior wash-down and cleaning chemicals also corrode standard galvanized roof edge and gutter metal faster than in a dry warehouse. On production buildings we spec heavier-gauge or coated edge metal at drain and scupper locations where runoff concentrates.

Tank Curbs, Silo Penetrations, and Rooftop Refrigeration

A production brewery roof carries fermentation tank vents, CO2 relief lines, grain silo penetrations, and glycol chiller units, often added in phases as the brewery scales output. Each one needs a properly flashed curb, and retrofitted curbs added after the original roof was installed are where we find most of our leaks on brewery inspections. We rebuild these to match the base system rather than caulking around a mismatched curb, since a caulk fix on a production roof rarely survives a full brewing season.

Rooftop refrigeration and glycol chiller loads on brewery buildings tend to be heavier and denser than a typical warehouse rooftop unit package, which means structural coordination matters before a chiller retrofit goes on an existing roof.

Mills River's Big Industrial Floor Plates

The Mills River corridor, alongside neighbors like GF Linamar's manufacturing operation, runs large low-slope roofs over open production floors with minimal interior columns. These are TPO and PVC territory almost exclusively, sized in acres rather than squares, and access logistics matter more here than on a small taproom: staging, crane placement, and material hoisting for a building this size take real planning before the crew ever gets on the roof.

Distribution warehouses often sit adjacent to the production floor at this scale, sharing a roofline but not always the same roof age or system, since expansion phases get added as volume grows. We treat the campus as a set of connected but distinct roof sections rather than one uniform field, matching new work to whichever system already covers the original building and flagging where a future expansion would need its own tie-in detail.

West Asheville and South Slope Taprooms

Smaller brewery and distillery taprooms along Haywood Road and in the South Slope district are frequently housed in older converted industrial buildings, some with roof decks that were never designed for the added weight of rooftop patios, string-light structures, or HVAC additions that came with the buildout. We check structural load before adding any rooftop amenity, and we account for the fact that these buildings often share party walls and drainage with adjacent tenants, which changes how a tear-off gets sequenced.

Vapor retarder assemblies sized for high interior humidity loads
Tank, silo, and CO2 relief line curb flashing and rebuilds
Glycol chiller and refrigeration unit structural coordination
Heavy-gauge edge metal at wash-down drain and scupper zones
Large-format TPO and PVC for production floor plates
Rooftop patio and amenity structural load verification

Bid Packages for Production Facilities

Brewery ownership groups and their facilities managers usually want a submittal that speaks the language of their process engineers as much as their finance department: product data on chemical resistance for the membrane, warranty coverage for the roof assembly around penetrations, and a shutdown schedule that does not interrupt a brewing run in progress. We coordinate directly with plant operations on timing, since halting a fermentation cycle mid-process is not something a brewery can simply reschedule around a roofer's calendar.

Preventive maintenance programs matter more on a production roof than a typical warehouse, since a small leak near a control panel or electrical room can shut down a fermentation run entirely. We recommend a scheduled inspection cycle keyed to seasonal production ramp, checking curb seals and drain lines before the busy brewing months rather than waiting for a report of standing water on the production floor.

Questions Brewery and Distillery Operators Ask

Can you flash around an existing tank or silo penetration without shutting down production?

In most cases yes, working section by section around the active equipment, though anything requiring a full curb rebuild needs a coordinated shutdown window with plant operations.

Does wash-down chemical exposure require a different membrane?

It requires attention to chemical resistance data on the membrane and heavier edge metal at drain points where runoff concentrates, which we build into the spec rather than treating as an upgrade.

How do you handle the humidity from brewing operations?

We size the vapor retarder and insulation package for the building's actual interior humidity load rather than a standard warehouse assumption, since that mismatch is the most common cause of early recover failures we see.