Method
How the numbers here are made
Every figure on this site links to where it came from and carries the date it was last looked up. Where nothing credible publishes a number, the page says so rather than filling the gap.
Last checked
The site runs on 63 checked figures: 18 from official UAE sources, mostly Dubai Municipality documents, and 45 from 5 named industry publishers, each labelled as one or the other wherever it appears. Figures are quoted as published, not estimated, averaged or rounded.
Where the figures come from
- Rules: Dubai Municipality's own pages and the Al Sa'fat regulation PDF, quoted with the table or clause number so you can find the line yourself.
- Prices: 2026 cost pages from named UAE businesses (a cost guide, a waterproofing contractor and two maintenance companies), quoted as theirs. The UAE has no official price list for this work, so industry pages are the best available, and they are labelled that way.
- Product details: a UAE building-materials retailer, for membrane thickness and what a roll costs online, with and without VAT.
No business pays to be cited here, and no source was chosen because of a commercial relationship. Several price figures come from firms that sell waterproofing work, which is why each chart names the firm and why their disagreements are shown rather than smoothed over.
What we deliberately left out
Several numbers that would have been useful did not survive checking, so they are not on the site:
- A per-square-metre price for EPDM or PVC sheet on a villa. One maintenance company publishes ranges for torch-on and liquid systems; nobody we found prices single-ply sheet the same way.
- A surcharge for high-rise or difficult access. Contractors clearly charge more for it, but no source we could link puts a percentage on it.
- "Redo it every seven to ten years." It is repeated widely in the Gulf. We could not find a source that publishes it, and the sources that do publish lifespans disagree with each other and with that range.
- Contractor liability for building defects under the UAE Civil Code. The official legislation portal blocks automated access, and a law should not be quoted from a second-hand summary.
- Prices for Qatar and Kuwait. We found no published price guide we could cite, so the site covers the UAE only and says so.
How they stay current
Every figure carries an expiry date. Before each update, a script lists anything past it and checks that every source link still opens, and the figure is re-verified at the source before it stays on the site. Price pages get a shorter life than regulations, because they move faster.
What this site is not
It is not a government body and has no connection to Dubai Municipality. It is not a contractor, and nothing here is engineering, legal or financial advice. An estimate from the calculator is a planning number, not a quote: only a contractor who has stood on your roof can give you one of those.
How the site is paid for
Quote requests are not open yet. When they open, requests may be passed to waterproofing firms, and those firms may pay us for the introduction. We do not employ, licence or inspect those firms, and a payment never changes a figure on this site.
We also sell a managed website plan to waterproofing firms, which includes a listing beside our guides. Listings are marked as listings, and a firm that pays for a website gets no say over any price, source or recommendation here.
This site may show advertising. Ads never change our figures, and any advertising partner will be named in the privacy policy before its ads appear.
Who runs it
Operator details (legal name, trade licence, address and email) are published here before this site launches.
If a number here is out of date or wrong, the contact page explains how to tell us. It will be checked against the source and corrected with a new date.