LESLIE: Harold in Arkansas has a roofing question. What’s going on?
HAROLD: I have a metal roof on my house. It’s been on there – it’s one of these painted, rib panel roofs. It’s been on my house about 30 years…
LESLIE: Mm-hmm.
HAROLD: … and the enamel paint is coming off and the galvanize is starting to show through. And I was wondering what y’all would recommend; what kind of paint to put on it. I’d rather put paint on it than cool seal because it’s painted a sand color and I’d like it to look like it did before – when it was new.
TOM: So what I would recommend that you do is to scrape, prime and paint. So you’re going to want to abrade it to get rid of all of the loose, flaky paint. Then you’re going to want to prime it with a good quality, metal primer and then I would use an oil-based topcoat. And a couple of layers of that should last you quite a long time. Now paint on a metal roof actually lasts a lot longer than paint, say, on the outside of your house and the reason is this: with a metal roof you don’t have the expansion and contraction; you don’t have the moisture that gets into it. So if it adheres correctly, that paint job can last you 20, 25 years.
LESLIE: There’s actually a great website. There’s a company called Calbar. Calbar Inc. is their website and they make acrylic elastameric roof paint, primers, sealers specifically for metal roofs and siding and they’ve been in the business 85 years. They’re website is very user-friendly. They offer a lot of colors. They sell the products. They also offer the services to do it. So it might be something you want to look into there.
TOM: Harold, thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
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