Thursday, August 12, 2010

Maintaining Your Metal Roof

Metal roofs are a lot less work than other kinds of roofs when it comes to maintenance, and can provide your home with protection for generations if taken care of properly. All metal roofs will come with a protective coating; however, this coating may not last very long. Therefore, the first and best step you will ever make in protective maintenance of your metal roof is to cover it with a new, reliable protective coating. Several different choices of metal roof coating are available and they include polymeric and asphalt coatings.

Most metal roofs are constructed using long metal sheets or with metal tiles. It doesn't matter what kind of material is used on your roof, there is going to be a danger that, at every intersection where the tiles or sheets are overlapped, leaks can occur. Metal roofs will usually wear fastest around the ridge and valley of the roof, as well as around the fascia board. This can be avoided with proper roof maintenance.

What’s Necessary

The majority of metal roofs are protected by being either aluminized or galvanized, or else they are painted with galvalume protective coating. Each of these materials is pretty much maintenance free, although regular cleaning is a necessity. However, it is better to add your own, high-performance protective coating if you want true piece of mind.

Out of all the different protective metal roof paints available, perhaps one of the best ones is Polyyinylidene Fluoride or PVDF. PVDF can increase the strength of the metal on your roof, it is resistant to chemicals and corrosive substances, it offers the highest weather resistance, protection from UV rays and it is even resistant to fungi. When you apply a PVDF treatment to your metal roof, you should only need to check it every 9 or 10 years to see if a new coat is required, while other metal roof finishes such as plastisol, acrylic and urethane will need checking after just 3 to 5 years.

Metal Roof Sealants

There are many great and innovative new solutions for metal roof sealing. Traditionally used ashphaultic sealants have been outperformed when compared to newer products such as the micro sealant called EternaBond. This new product comes as a large roll of sticky tape and can be applied easily by anyone, even somebody with no experience. The EternaBond tape offers great resistance to temperature extremes and inclement weather, and it’s a good fix for leakages too. However, it’s worthwhile to know that while a sealant such as this is great for patch up jobs, employing preventative measures such as a PVDF coating means that it’s unlikely you will ever need to use a sealant.

1 comment:

Liquid Rubber said...

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