Roof Painting

Roof painting has been a popular improvement for home owners to make to their homes for over 100 years, particularly on iron roofs.

While roof painting has been a popular home improvement for a very long time, it has in recent years become a lot more sophisticated, and even become an industry of it’s own — see our Roof Restoration page.

While years ago, you’d generally get your local painter or even handyman to paint your roof (or even paint it yourself if you were brave!), these days the accepted practice is to have a roof restoration company paint your roof.

Painting a roof is far more advanced than just “slapping on a couple of coats of paint”, and requires an extremely thorough preparation.

Not only is the preparation important. The paints used on roofs be must of ultra high quality and durability compared with a standard exterior paint, for example. You see, your roof is in the sun for up to 16 hours per day in summer, and 13 hours per day in winter. That’s why roof paints must be of the highest durability. There are 2 major factors that differentiate a quality roof paint from an exterior paint you’d use on your walls for example:

1. Percentage of solids. Even premium quality exterior acrylics can be around 30% solids, and 70% water. A quality roof paint can be up to 50% solids — this makes it, among other factors, extremely durable.
2. Elasticity. Because of the harshness of the Australian sun, generally speaking, a highly elastic paint will outlast the other paints. The more elastic qualities the paint has, the less likely it is to crack, peel and flake — providing the roof has been properly prepared.

These days, there are several companies who exclusively make roof coatings, or atleast it’s their main product. At Reliance, we use ‘Shieldcoat’ because it is second to none in terms of quality. You can check out our Shieldcoat page for more information on why we prefer Shieldcoat products.

The Process For Painting a Roof:

• Pressure clean the existing surface. A pressure cleaner that produces atleast 3,000 psi pressure is essential to get a spotless surface. If the roof has been previously painted, and any of the previous paint is loose or peeling, it will be necessary to strip off the old paint. To achieve this, you may need an even more powerful machine (4,000 psi).
• Repair the roof— Replacing broken tiles and re-pointing ridge caps, for example, on a tiled roof. Replacing loose nails or screws, and removing rust on a metal roof.
• Prime the surface. A concrete tile sealer and primer on tiled roofs. An etch primer on metal roofs.
• Apply at least 2 heavy coats of, preferably, a premium quality water based acrylic roof (membrane) coating.

Roof Tiles Before & After Being Painted by Reliance Roof Restoration

CALL US FOR A FREE QUOTE

Call Reliance for a free quote on restoring your roof. You’ll be placed under no obligation and our quote will be fair. Call (07) 3286 3900.