CASE STUDY
Richmond City Hall Annex
Richmond, BC
The Richmond City Hall Annex is a 14,489 sq ft municipal facility on Minoru Blvd whose modified bitumen roof, installed in 2000, was approaching the end of its 20-year design life. With ponding, granule loss, and aged flashing visible across all five roof sections, the City retained Pinpoint to determine exactly how much of the roof was compromised before committing to a repair or replacement budget.
Pinpoint’s team scanned the full 14,489 sq ft roof — sections R-1 through R-5 — combining infrared thermography with capacitance moisture scanning and core sampling to separate genuinely wet material from a roof that simply looked tired.
14,489
Sq Ft Roof Surveyed
1,041
Sq Ft Wet Coverboard Found
F
Overall Condition Grade
~1
Yr Service Life Remaining
Apr
2025 Survey Completed
// Survey Scope & Methodology
Five roof sections, scanned and cut to confirm
Pinpoint’s field team scanned all five roof sections (R-1 through R-5) using an RWS roof scanner and Tramex Dec Scanner, cross-checked with DJI Mavic 3 Enterprise thermal drone imaging. A calibration core cut in a known-dry area confirmed baseline readings between 0–9.2% moisture content before the full survey began.
Every elevated reading was marked in the field with orange spray paint, then verified with a Tramex handheld moisture meter and confirmed with targeted core cuts — including one that recorded 27.0% moisture in the coverboard while the polyiso insulation directly beneath remained dry and intact.
// What We Found
Wet coverboard in two sections — the rest holding dry
The field membrane itself was graded Failed, with severe granule loss, blisters, ponding, and aged flashing typical of a 25-year-old system near the end of its life. Moisture scanning found the damage was not uniform: R-1 and R-3 held roughly 1,041 sq ft of wet coverboard between them, while R-2, R-4, and R-5 all scanned fully dry. In every wet zone, the coverboard held the moisture and the underlying polyiso insulation tested dry — the failure had not yet reached the structural layer.
R-1
7,604 sq ft · 10.5% wet, insulation dry
R-2
856 sq ft · No moisture detected
R-3
2,705 sq ft · 8.9% wet, insulation dry
R-4
291 sq ft · No moisture detected
Recommendation
A full roof replacement was not necessary. With moisture isolated to the coverboard layer in R-1 and R-3 and insulation intact and dry throughout, Pinpoint recommended a targeted restoration: remove and replace membrane and wet coverboard in the affected sections, skim the remaining dry sections down to the insulation, and install new coverboard and membrane across all five areas — a full-surface restoration without the cost of a complete tear-off.
Project Participants
Client :
City of Richmond / Garland Canada
Location:
6900 Minoru Blvd, Richmond, BC
Roof System:
Steel deck, polyiso insulation, modified bitumen (SBS)
Survey Method:
RWS roof scanner, Tramex probe + DJI Mavic 3 Enterprise thermal drone
Delivered by:
Pinpoint Diagnostics Group
Richmond City Hall Annex
Case Study PDF