Commercial roof coating in Exeter
Devon gets some of the highest rainfall of any English county, and Exeter’s commercial roofs deal with it month after month: driving south-westerlies, long wet spells and the occasional storm pushing up the Exe estuary. Commercial roof coating in Exeter is built for roofs that have weathered all this but remain structurally sound. Rather than stripping the roof off, a liquid-applied waterproof membrane is applied over the prepared surface, curing into one continuous layer that seals laps, fixings, flashings and the awkward details where leaks usually start.
For an occupied building, the appeal is obvious: a fraction of the cost of replacement, far less disruption, and no weeks of an open roof in a county where dry weather windows are precious.
Typical roofs across Exeter and east Devon
The city’s commercial stock splits roughly three ways. The business parks on Exeter’s edges carry modern and not-so-modern steel portal-frame units with profiled metal roofs. Older trading estates and rural premises towards Tiverton and Honiton still rely heavily on fibre cement sheeting, much of it decades old. And in the city itself, offices, retail and converted buildings hide flat roofs in felt, asphalt or single-ply behind their parapets.
Wet climates accelerate the usual defects: cut edge corrosion on metal, moss and porosity on cement sheets, blistered and cracked seams on felt. None of these automatically rules out a coating, but each demands different preparation and a different system, which is why identification comes before any price.
Our process, from survey to sign-off
Every job begins with a physical inspection of the roof: substrate condition, seams and laps, fixings, rooflights, drainage, ponding and checks for moisture already trapped in the build-up. The findings become a written, photographed report with a clear recommendation. Only if the roof suits a coating do we issue a specification, naming the system, the preparation steps and the detailing.
- Full roof survey with photographic record
- Written specification matched to the actual substrate
- Cleaning, repairs and corrosion treatment before application
- Membrane applied to the manufacturer’s thickness and conditions
- Final inspection before handover
From Exeter we range across Devon and over the Somerset border where needed, covering Exmouth, Newton Abbot, Tiverton and Honiton among others, which suits owners and managing agents with buildings spread around the county.
When coating is the wrong answer
Some roofs should not be coated, and we say so. If insulation inside the roof is saturated, a new membrane seals the water in and the deck deteriorates underneath. If sheets or decking are corroded or rotted through, there is nothing sound to bond to. Widespread fixing failure, advanced corrosion in the body of metal sheets, brittle fibre cement that cannot safely be worked on, and ponding caused by structural deflection all point the same way: repair or replace, not coat. Where the survey finds these conditions, the report recommends accordingly. We would rather lose a coating job than sell one that fails.
Why survey-led work pays for itself
The price of a coating job is visible up front; the cost of a bad one arrives later, as stained ceilings, damaged stock and a roof that now needs replacing anyway. The factors that separate the two are all decided early: an accurate survey, honest assessment, thorough preparation and the right system for the substrate. That is what survey-led means in practice, and it is the standard every Exeter building owner should hold any contractor to, ours included.
