Parapet Wall Repair in Burbank, IL

Emerald Masonry LLC provides parapet wall repair in Burbank, IL — coping replacement, through-wall flashing, repointing both faces of the wall and rebuilding the top courses where the condition calls for it. We schedule the masonry ahead of your roof replacement, so the new membrane terminates against a sound wall instead of being cut open a year later. Free on-site assessments: (708) 288-1696.

Burbank's commercial buildings are small, flat-roofed and mostly owner-occupied. Along Cicero Avenue, State Road, 79th Street and 87th Street you find one- and two-storey brick buildings housing contractors, auto shops, restaurants, offices and light industrial users — plus the schools, churches and brick apartment buildings scattered between the bungalow blocks. Almost every one has a masonry parapet around the roof edge.

And on almost every one, the parapet is first looked at properly when a roofer climbs up to price a tear-off.

That is the right moment to look at a parapet — and the wrong moment to leave it. A new roof is turned up and terminated against the parapet. Fix the masonry after the roof goes on and you are paying to cut into a brand-new membrane.

Why parapet wall repair in Burbank should come before the roof

A parapet and a roof share one detail: the point where the membrane turns up the inside face of the wall and the masonry above laps over it. The roofer owns the membrane and base flashing. The mason owns the coping, the through-wall flashing and the reglet or joint that receives the counterflashing.

When those two jobs happen in the wrong order, three things go wrong:

1. The roofer terminates onto failing masonry. Termination bars and sealant fastened into soft, cracked brick or open joints do not hold.
2. Water keeps coming in from above. A new roof does nothing for an open coping joint, so the "roof leak" returns and the roofer gets called back.
3. The masonry repair destroys the new work. Rebuilding the top courses or installing through-wall flashing later means cutting back the base flashing on a roof that may still be under warranty.

If you are pricing a roof replacement in Burbank, have the parapet assessed in the same month. If the parapet needs work, the masonry goes first, and the roofer arrives to a wall that is ready.

What a parapet is, and how it fails

A parapet is the part of the exterior wall that continues above the roof line. It is wet from both faces, capped horizontally, exposed to every freeze-thaw cycle, and almost never inspected. On Burbank's 1950s and 1960s commercial stock it is typically brick on the street face with common brick or concrete block behind, capped with clay tile, limestone, precast or sheet-metal coping.

Signs you need parapet wall repair

• Open or cracked coping joints, or coping stones that rock when pushed.
• Spalled, flaking or missing brick on the roof-side face — usually worse than the street face.
• The parapet leaning outward or bulging, visible when you sight along the roof edge.
• Water stains on the top-floor ceiling or walls near the perimeter, even after roof repairs.
• White efflorescence or rust streaks running down the street face from the top.
• Old sign brackets, conduit straps, satellite mounts and guy-wire anchors drilled into the wall.
• Base flashing pulling away from the inside face of the wall.

Rooftop equipment, signs and two generations of tenants

Owner-occupied buildings change use. A Burbank building that housed a print shop in the 1980s may now hold a restaurant with a rooftop exhaust fan, a new HVAC unit, a sign on the parapet face and a satellite dish strapped to the coping. Every one of those installations was fastened into the parapet, and almost none of the abandoned ones were ever patched.

Those holes are the most overlooked water entry on small commercial roofs. Our scope lists every penetration we find — active and abandoned — and assigns each a fix: reseal, patch, replace the unit, or relocate the bracket onto a curb rather than the wall.

Risks of waiting on parapet repair in Burbank

• Interior damage — ceilings, insulation, inventory and equipment under the perimeter.
• Falling masonry — a loose coping stone or brick above a sidewalk, parking lot or entrance is a liability, not a maintenance item.
• Steel corrosion — water in the wall reaches lintels and roof framing.
• A shorter roof life — a parapet leak that saturates the insulation can shorten the life of a membrane that is otherwise sound.
• A bigger scope — a parapet that needs repointing this year can need rebuilding after two or three more winters.

Our parapet repair process

1. Roof walk and photographs. Both faces of the parapet, the coping, every penetration and the membrane termination.
2. Coordinate with your roofer. We agree who owns the counterflashing and when each trade is on the roof.
3. Written scope with quantities — linear feet of coping, square feet of repointing, courses to rebuild, penetrations to seal.
4. Make safe any loose coping or brick immediately.
5. Repair: grind and repoint both faces, replace damaged units, reset or replace coping on fresh bedding with sealed joints, install through-wall flashing where the top courses are rebuilt.
6. Hand over a wall ready for the roofer to terminate onto, with photos and lien waivers.

Materials

Type N or Type S mortar selected for the existing brick; matched face brick and common brick; replacement clay, limestone or precast coping with stainless anchors where required; membrane or metal through-wall flashing with end dams and drip edges; urethane sealant at coping joints and penetrations. Where a parapet will be rebuilt, we also look at whether a metal coping cap over the masonry is the better long-term choice for that building.

What drives the cost of parapet wall repair

• Linear footage of the parapet and its height above the roof.
• Coping — reset versus full replacement, and the material.
• Repoint versus rebuild — rebuilding the top courses is the largest cost driver.
• Access — roof hatch, ladder, lift and material hoisting.
• Rooftop equipment and signage that has to be worked around or removed.
• Roof timing — work done alongside a roof replacement avoids cutting and re-flashing later.

We never quote a parapet without seeing it. Emerald provides a free on-site assessment and a written scope, so you and your roofer are pricing the same building.

Burbank and nearby

Burbank sits between Oak Lawn and the city line, and its commercial strips share the same building generation as neighbouring Bridgeview and Oak Lawn — so we see the same parapet details, the same tile and limestone copings, and the same history of rooftop equipment changes. We also work across the Southwest Side and the wider commercial masonry service area in Cook, DuPage and Will County. Building managers and owners can see how we work with them on our property managers page.

Why Burbank owners call Emerald for parapet wall repair

Emerald Masonry LLC is a family-owned commercial masonry contractor serving Chicago and the Chicagoland suburbs, led by career masons with decades of hands-on Chicagoland experience. We handle commercial tuckpointing, façade and parapet repair, lintel replacement, CMU block repair, brick repair and replacement, caulking, sealing and commercial masonry restoration. Free on-site assessments — call (708) 288-1696.

• Established 2024, led by career masons who do the work themselves.
• Licensed, bonded and insured; COI, W-9 and lien waivers on request.
• Written, itemized scopes that a roofer, owner or lender can read.
• Coordinated with your roofer, so the two trades are not working against each other.

Related services: parapet wall repair, commercial tuckpointing, caulking and joint sealant, lintel repair, brick replacement and commercial masonry restoration.

Pricing a new roof in Burbank? Call (708) 288-1696 or request a free parapet assessment before the tear-off is scheduled.