Roof in a Day!

[SkinnerVic]

So, we had some time yesterday for three gens (Pop, my eldest son and me) to knock out an entire roof re-coating. We had all our equipment setup and ready at 8am (hard to get the teens up early). Knock out worked like this:

1) Set the forklift (16 ft rise) with a people carrier to shuttle us all the way around cleaning, laying tape and plastic.
2) Getting rid of major blisters with floor scraper.
3) 20% TSP solution - broom wash loose dirt and bird poop.
4) Fire up the Landa 3500psi pressure washer with hot-pot. Any places that showed a de-lamination or scrapped blister were hit hard (1" off surface). You can see my son was digging into one spot in the picture. I would do the outside, he would do the center (uninterested in urgent care visit). You can see the white shift from clean to dirty. Having a heater (hot-pot) on a pressure washer made that possible. It just literally would cut through all of it, but if it could hang on with 2-4" away, it's solid.
5) Let it dry with help of a leaf blower, which is invaluable for getting the flaked paint off. I suggest having a metric butt-load of microfiber towels for spot dry, cleaning hose trash off, etc.
6) Painting Henry 887 Tropicool, per instruction (front to back first coat, sideways painting from the people carrier on the forklift front side to side on second) Was able to get back on the second coat in 2 hours, no lifting/pulling of the base coat. I think we *might* be a little thin, but I don't see how anyone puts it on thicker on that roof with a 3/4 nap roller. Used 80% of one 5 gallon bucket in two coats.
7) Shot at 4:10pm when done with second coat (low with shadow from building).
8) Pulled off all the tape and plastic with forklift. This was one of the hardest things we did. That 3M blue did NOT want to come off the paint. It was crazy. It took easily 45 minutes, and almost 15 min longer than putting it up!
9) Rolled her back in the warehouse to sit overnight with the heaters on. Those kind of silane/silicone don't like to cure cold even though they say they can paint down to 35F, letting her cure indoors at 55+ degree F helps.

She was right as rain this AM, last two photos are front and back views. Film from the Henry is SIGNIFICANTLY thicker than test subject.

All in all, couldn't ask for a better day - we killed it (and I'm paying for it today!)

[Ck2hans]

SkinnerVic:

Looks great. From your roof line it looks like we have the same vintage H3's. A LOT of my heat comes from the roof (fiberglass) portion on the front cap area. Are you going to coat that too?

Chuck

[PrevostNewbie]

Well Done! Henry's is a good product. It can be a bit slippery if you are walking around up there, but no roof coating I have used cleans up better with soap and water.

[Gil_J]

That looks great! Agreed, that doing the horizontal part of the front cap cold be advantageous.

[SkinnerVic]

Thanks guys. I'll be honest, not really though about painting that front (and back for that matter) but I can absolutely see where everyone is going. I like the Tropicool rather than Bus Kote (don't get me started on FTC / Kryton Coatings type mix-in insulation beads - I'm in the heat reduction industry). When Henry says sticks to metal, it implies there's a silane component to the silicone (which helps it either stick or be hydrophobic - depends on where the end is pointed).

So - I really need to fix the front seams, which we never planned on the painting on that round of work. Here are some photos of what needs to get done. Also, I'm so happy I have heated water on the pressure washer - we had mold/mildew and a bird's nest back by the Sat Dish (which is gone and I'm going to put that up here soon as well).

Suggestions on repair for the front?

Thanks,
Mark

[Gil_J]

Someone sure made a mess. You can clean it up and properly seal it with a caulk sealant. Another good product seldom seen on Prevost's is Eternabond. It comes in a variety of widths and is UV tolerant.

[Ck2hans]

Will the roof coating adhere to Eternabond?

[PrevostNewbie]

Tropicool does not adhere to Eternabond. What i would do with that is scrape off all the old sealant, Mineral Sprits works well once all the chunks are gone. Use eternabond around the items sticking out of the roof and run a strip along that exposed seam. Then cover the edges of the eternabond with something like Dicor self leveling. Let that cure then roll your Henry's right up to and over the dicor. If you get the Tropicool on the eternabond on accident don't worry it rubs right off with your finger post curing. use the 4" eternabond, and Dicor self leveling Dove Bright white or white, it will match your tropicool nicely.

[SkinnerVic]

Gil, I was thinking the same thing and I'm ashamed we didn't spot it (but it's way over the visible edge from the ground.

Mike's suggestion sounds akin to using PVA over foam to keep the gelcoat from melting it. I like that methodology. I've been reading on both the Dicor self-leveling and the Eternabond. Yeah, that front section is a hot mess, lots of razor blades I see in my future!

[PrevostNewbie]

If you don't have one already, one of those multi use oscillating tools work great, they buzz the old caulk right off, then hand scrape with a Hyde scraper, then rub down with mineral spirits. I have a Dremel 3.5 amp i picked up many years ago, Home Depot sells them. i use the flat chisel tip, the one with the teeth gets gummed up pretty quick.

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Dremel-M...B&gclsrc=aw.ds