Thread title says it all. It’s coming up on time to recoat the rubber roof on our house (according to the people we bought it from) but all of the elastomeric sealants I can find at Home Depot say “do not use on rubber roofs” for some reason or another. Googling “elastomeric coating for rubber roofs” and the like seems to return results that will put a rubber coating on top of another type of roofing material.
I’m clearly not doing something right here. Perhaps all of the “do not use on rubber roof” products would work fine on top of a pre-existing coat of sealant, but not on a virgin roof? I dunno.
Could someone shed some light on this for me? I shall immortalize your contribution in writing on my shiny new roof coating for passing aircraft and satellites to look upon (until the sidewalk chalk wears off).
What would be unusual about it? Lots of people have rubber roofs. Do you mean unusual that I would need to put an elastomeric coating on it, because that may well be. I’m only doing it because the folks I bought the house from told me how old the present coating was at the time, so that I would know when to reapply it. He said it needs to be done every five years or so, but he may have been blowing smoke.
I don’t think so. According to the product page, this is a coating (possibly EPDM, I’m not sure) to be applied to other roof types. I’m looking for a coating to be applied to EPDM.
It’s possible that the seller only told me to recoat it every five years to maintain the color (EPDM is blackish, my roof is white) and that a rubber roof typically doesn’t require any sort of coating for preservation. This stuff is all new to me.
Thanks for the input so far. I guess the question now is, does an EPDM roof even require an elastomeric coating, or is this just for the sake of appearance?
EPDM is a type of elastomer / rubber. It can be colored. Black is typical because the carbon black component adds a cheap ozone resistance. But other UV resistant components can be added for colored EPDM.
EPDM’s are what are typically used for outdoor applications. The weatherstrip on your car is usually an EPDM.
I would think that with the amount of exposure that a roof gets, that it should be re-coated.
EPDM are fairly hard to adhere to. Putting an EPDM coating on top of an EPDM roof would make sense.
There seem to be a lot of links for EPDM roof coatings.
But maybe the coating is now non-EPDM and the EPDM coating won’t stick.
The natural rubber or synthetic rubber such as EPDM is very oily, but there is surely a way to prime it. you need to put on a coat that sticks to the existing coat. If the existing coat is damaged, then you prime the exposed patched of rubber first,and then coat with a substance compatible with both the existing coat and the new primer.
Here’s some instructions on how to apply “peel and seal” (white) to the EPDM.
You need to talk to a roofing company and do not take advice from anyone who has not seen the roof.
First it is not a rubber roof, It is a Membrane Roof and there are 4 major types EPDM, CSPE, PIB and PVC. By far the most common and most likely on your house is EPDM.
Second you do not need to re-coat a membrane roof. That terminology goes back to the old style built up roofs with asphalt and such. Now perhaps some trim or flashing sections need to be beefed up and such but the entire roof in general I highly doubt.
If it is a Membrane Roof then either the roof is good, or it needs to be replace. Not much middle ground there.
If this roof is PVC from the 1980’s or thereabout then you got big problems as that was new technology at the time and most of them had to be replaced. As I understand the PVC now is much improved.
Is the roof sloped or flat ? If flat you might want to invest in putting in a slight slope for runoff. As a crusty old construction super told me long long ago. “There are two types of flat roofs. Those that leak, and those that will”
In the 7+ years since the OP was looking for advice he’s probably had the roof done twice: once shortly after this thread was new and once five years later = 2 years ago.
I posted this exact same thing just after the re-animation last night. I quoted the just joined new poster. It looks like both he and my post were corn fielded.
Hmm. In that case I’m assuming the thread was reanimated by somebody shilling / spamming for a roof coating company which included a link to his products. Which you quoted, thereby converting your post into spam-by-proxy.
This is one of those cases where I’d favor the mods’ policy being something like: “Old threads reanimated by spammers will have the spam cornfielded, the thread locked, and a final mod note added explaining both actions.”