Most of the work in a coating project happens before any coating goes down. Here is the whole process, start to finish.
People often picture a roof coating as painting a roof. It is a reasonable mental image and it is almost entirely wrong. The coating itself is the last and fastest part of the job. Everything that determines whether the system lasts happens before it.
Here is what a properly run coating project actually looks like.
Step one: the inspection
We walk the entire roof. Every penetration, curb, drain, scupper, seam, flashing and termination gets looked at and photographed. We check for ponding evidence, soft spots and wet insulation, because those determine whether coating is even appropriate.
You get the photographs and a written scope. If the roof is not a coating candidate, this is where we tell you, before anyone has spent money.
Step two: cleaning and preparation
The roof gets power washed and allowed to dry fully. Coatings bond to the surface they are applied to, and a surface carrying dirt, chalk, biological growth or loose material is not a surface worth bonding to.
Loose and failed material is removed. Rust on metal roofs is treated and primed. Any substrate repair identified in the inspection gets done now rather than covered over.
Step three: the detail work
This is the part that separates a system that lasts from one that fails in three years, and it is invisible once the job is done.
Seams, fastener heads, laps, curbs, drains, scuppers, pipe penetrations and wall terminations are sealed and reinforced, usually with embedded fabric at the highest-stress points. These are the places roofs actually leak, and they get treated individually before any field coating is applied.
Step four: application and walkthrough
The field coating goes down at the specified mil thickness, in coats where the system calls for it, in weather conditions that allow a proper cure. We will move a job rather than apply into conditions that will compromise the result.
Then we walk the finished roof with you. Every detail we treated gets shown and confirmed, and you get the completed documentation for your records. That final walkthrough is not a formality — it is where you verify you got what the estimate specified.