Roof Coating on a Sheep Shed near Wakefield, West Yorkshire

What the survey found

The survey started on the roof itself and worked down. Across the main slopes the plastisol was chalking heavily, worst on the south facing elevation where the sun had done the most damage. We checked the coating right across the roof, not just the visible worst of it, so the plan covered the whole surface rather than patches. A wipe test lifted a clear film of pigment off the surface, which told us the coating was breaking down rather than simply dirty, and that any new paint would need a thorough wash and the right primer to key to.

At the sheet ends we found the usual weak points. Cut edge corrosion had started along the eaves and at the sheet laps, where the exposed steel had begun to rust and creep back under the coating. None of it was beyond repair, but left alone the cut edge corrosion would only spread and start to eat into the steel in earnest. Several roof fixings showed surface rust and a few had backed off slightly and needed attention. The gutters were serviceable but carrying a season of grime and moss, and we noted them for clearing so the washed off residue had somewhere to go.

Access was straightforward once planned. The roof pitch and the ground around the shed let us work safely from a mobile elevating work platform, reaching every slope without walking the sheets or loading the roof. We planned the MEWP positions in advance so every slope could be reached in turn without moving stock or blocking the working areas of the farm. Working from a MEWP also kept our spray teams off the fragile surface and gave clean, controlled access for the cladding painting across the West Yorkshire roof.

Throughout, the shed stayed in use. We phased the work around the farm so the sheep and the routine of the site carried on with minimal interruption, and we kept overspray tightly controlled so nothing drifted onto stock, vehicles or the neighbouring West Yorkshire farmland. By keeping the work moving and the mess contained, we made sure the survey and the coating never got in the way of the farm running as normal.

The finished sheep shed

The change is easy to read. Where the roof had been a streaked, chalking off-white, the sheets now carry an even, solid colour with a soft sheen, finished in Honesty, a warm neutral that suits an agricultural building and hides nothing about the quality of the preparation underneath. Up close the spray finish is even from ridge to eaves, with no heavy runs or thin patches, which is what a proper airless application on clean, primed steel should give.

What the client gets is a roof that looks cared for and, more to the point, is protected again. The cut edges are sealed, the fixings are sound, and the whole surface sits under a coating built to shed water and take the weather. A coating like this is also far easier to look after than bare, weathered plastisol, and it can be washed down and inspected as part of normal farm maintenance. Instead of a repaint that only tidies the appearance, the sprayed system puts a proper protective layer back over steel that had lost it.

It is the same result we look for on every roof, whether a West Yorkshire farm shed like this one near Wakefield or the commercial units we spray elsewhere. The principles do not change with the building, only the scale and the detail of the preparation. If you want to see how the approach carries across to bigger cladding, another recent project shows the same preparation and spray painting on a retail park in the south.

For the farm, the outcome is a working sheep shed in West Yorkshire that has been protected for the long term without the cost, waste and downtime of a full re-roof, and a roof that will be easy to maintain from here. The shed looks the part again too, which counts for something on a tidy, well run farm.

Standards behind our sheep shed roof coating work

Farm roof sheets go brittle with age, so how the roof is reached matters as much as what goes on it. Our teams plan every job around the HSE's guidance on fragile farm roofs, and we hold CHAS accreditation so the health and safety paperwork a managing agent or farm business asks for is ready before the first van arrives.