Our commercial roof had suffered from repeated leaks and years of temporary patch repairs. The initial survey was thorough and highlighted the areas requiring repair, corrosion treatment and protective coating. Communication remained excellent throughout the project, the site was kept organised and we received progress photographs at every stage. Since the work was completed, we have experienced no further water ingress.
Helen J.Facilities Director, West MidlandsCommercial case study
Roof Coating on an MOT Garage near Swindon, Wiltshire
Chalked, rust streaked fine rib roof treated for cut edge corrosion and recoated anthracite on an MOT garage near Swindon, with the testing lanes open throughout.
Documented in six stagesSurvey-led from day oneReal project record
Accredited, insured and audited
IPAFPOWERED ACCESS TRAINED£10mPUBLIC LIABILITYIPAFPOWERED ACCESS TRAINED£10mPUBLIC LIABILITYUp to 20-year manufacturer-backed guarantees£10m public liability insuranceFully licensed and qualified drone operatorsTrained, experienced coating teams
LocationSwindon, Wiltshire
BuildingMOT garage
ServiceRoof coating
SectorCommercial
Client feedback
What clients say about our work
We instructed the company to respray several occupied industrial units across our estate. Access and working areas were organised carefully, tenants received plenty of notice and there was minimal disruption to daily operations. The colour and finish are consistent across every unit.
David K.Industrial Estate Owner, CoventryThe grain-store roof had corrosion developing around the sheet edges and fixings. We received a clear explanation of the problem, photographs of the affected areas and a sensible quotation. The work was completed neatly and on time.
Thomas E.Grain Farm Owner, CambridgeshireWe had several areas of cracked render and faded exterior walls. Everything was repaired properly before the coating was applied, and the finished building looks clean, modern and professionally maintained.
Rebecca S.Commercial Property Manager, BristolThe factory remained operational throughout the project, which was essential for us. The team followed our site procedures and completed the roof coating safely and efficiently.
Michael B.Factory Manager, ManchesterWe thought the machinery shed would need completely recladding, but they recommended a more affordable coating solution. It now looks years younger.
Peter C.Agricultural Contractor, ShropshireThe team kept us informed throughout and carefully planned the work around customers, tenants and delivery vehicles.
Claire M.Retail Park Manager, NottinghamOur warehouse cladding was badly faded. The new coating has completely transformed the appearance of the building.
Andrew T.Warehouse Owner, BirminghamThey worked around the livestock and daily farm routine without causing us any problems. Proper job.
James R.Dairy Farmer, SomersetThe work was completed on schedule and caused very little disruption to the estate.
Susan W.Estate Manager, YorkshireReliable team, tidy workmanship and a very professional finish.
Mark H.Commercial Landlord, OxfordExcellent work. The barn looks brand new.
Daniel P.Farm Owner, Lincolnshire
Stage 01 · Before
The building and the brief: MOT garage roof coating near Swindon
An MOT garage cannot shut. Test slots are booked out weeks ahead, the ramps earn their keep every working hour, and a closed bay is money walking down the road to a competitor. So when the owner of a busy MOT and repair workshop on an industrial estate near Swindon watched the roof above his testing lanes turn from grey to a streaky, chalked white, he had two questions for us: can it be saved, and can you do it without stopping my testers.
Yes to both, and the photographs that follow trace the whole MOT garage roof coating from first survey to the finished anthracite roof. It is a textbook example of the work our commercial roof coating service does on trade and automotive buildings across Wiltshire and well beyond.
The building is a single storey steel portal frame workshop of the kind found on every industrial estate around Swindon: light grey profiled steel cladding to the walls, two roller shutter doors feeding the testing lanes and repair bays, MOT signage on the front elevation, and a long, shallow pitch roof in fine rib trapezoidal profiled steel running the full depth of the unit.
That roof was the problem. The factory finish on the sheets had reached the end of its life. The coating had chalked back to a pale, powdery surface that shifted in colour from sheet to sheet, rust was bleeding from the fixings and tracking along the sheet laps, and the gutter run at the eaves was stained, blocked and streaking dirt down the wall head below it.
The owner did not want a new roof, and he was right not to want one. Stripping and re-sheeting a working MOT garage means scaffold, crane time, open bays under British weather and days of lost testing. What the building actually needed was an MOT garage roof coating: proper preparation, honest corrosion treatment, and a high build protective coating over sheets that were still structurally sound.
What the survey found
We walked every slope of the roof before anything was priced. The sheets themselves were sound, with no holes and no failed fixings, but the surface told the usual story of a coating that had given up years earlier. Heavy chalking across the whole roof area. Oxidation staining pulling out of the screw heads. Cut edge corrosion starting along the sheet laps and at the eaves, where the exposed cut ends of the sheets had begun to rust back from the edge.
Cut edge corrosion is the detail that decides these jobs. Caught at this stage, it is treated, primed and sealed as part of the coating work. Ignored, it keeps eating along the lap until the sheet ends fail, and at that point the conversation is about replacement rather than coating. This roof was caught in time, which is exactly where a coating system earns its keep.
The survey also confirmed what the job had to work around: a fully operational MOT station below, cars arriving from early morning, and a yard that had to keep taking deliveries and customer vehicles throughout.
Photographed at every stageSurvey before any priceManufacturer coating systemsUK-wide coverage
On site
The work, stage by stage
The sequence below follows the roof from the state we found it in to the finished anthracite grey, photographed as the job moved through washing, preparation and spraying.
Stage 02 · Washing down
Washing down
One of the team works the pressure lance across the slope, the washed sheets showing clean against the chalked ones still waiting. Everything loose came off before any repair or primer went near the roof.
Preparation began with a full pressure wash of the whole roof area, stripping the chalked residue, grime and every trace of loose coating back to a sound surface. Wash water was managed at the gutters as we went, and the gutter run itself was cleared and cleaned, because a coating job that pours dirty water down a customer facing wall has failed before the first coat goes on.
Stage 03 · Preparation
Preparation
Masking taped along the gutter line and wall head, primer over the treated fixings and laps, and one of the team sealing the eaves edge trim. This is the stage that decides how long the finished roof lasts.
Then the repairs. Every rusted fixing head was treated and primed, the corroded lap edges were taken back to sound metal and sealed with a rust inhibiting primer, and the cut edges at the eaves, the worst of the corrosion, got the same treatment along their full length. With the repairs primed, the gutter line and wall head were masked with film and tape along the full length of the eaves, ready for the sprayers. None of that work is visible in the finished photographs, and all of it matters more than the colour that covers it.
Stage 04 · Spraying
Spraying
The first band of anthracite going on behind a straight wet edge, worked away from the prepared sheets. The workshop below stayed open through every coat.
The coating system went on in two spray applied coats: a high build elastomeric topcoat in anthracite grey, chosen by the owner from our coating colours range to sit smartly against the light grey cladding below it. Spraying ran slope by slope behind a live wet edge, and stopped whenever the wind picked up, because overspray across a yard of customer cars outside an MOT station is a risk nobody sensible takes. The yard below the working edge was kept clear a bay at a time, and the testing lanes kept booking cars in all week.
Stage 05 · After
After
Job complete: the team packs the kit away beside the van below the finished anthracite roof, walls and signage untouched. One clean sweep of colour from ridge to gutter.
The elastomeric film earns its place on a roof like this three times over. It seals the treated laps and fixings against the weather, it bridges the small movement a steel roof makes through every heat cycle, and it puts a thick, waterproof, UV stable surface over sheets that had none of those properties left in them.
Stage 06 · Detail
Detail
The coating turns the corrugation ends and the verge in one even film above the cleaned gutter. The cut edges that started the trouble are sealed inside it.
The edge detail shows where the system finishes the job: the coating turns the corrugation ends and the drip edge in one continuous film, sealing the cut edges where the corrosion began, and the cleared gutter now runs beneath a crisp coated line instead of a ragged rusty one.
Commercial & industrial coating systems we specify
Rust-OleumJotunSherwin-WilliamsPPGSika
Always specified to the substrate and exposure after a free site survey
The finished MOT garage roof
Set against the first photograph, the transformation tells its own story. The streaked, chalked white roof that was dragging the whole unit down now reads as one clean, even sweep of anthracite from ridge to gutter. The walls, doors and signage below were untouched throughout, and the building looks like a business doing well rather than a unit waiting for a landlord's decision.
The testing lanes never closed. Cars were booked in and tested every working day of the programme, deliveries kept arriving, and the owner's only real involvement after the survey was choosing the colour. That is what a well planned MOT garage roof coating should look like from the client's side of the counter: nothing.
Commercial roof coating across Wiltshire and the UK
Swindon's industrial estates carry hundreds of roofs exactly like this one, and so do the trading estates around Chippenham, Marlborough and Devizes: fine rib profiled steel put up decades ago, factory finishes long past their best, and businesses underneath that cannot afford to close. We provide commercial roof coating in Swindon and across Wiltshire, with the same crews working as industrial painters across Swindon and north into the trading towns around Cirencester.
The same specification serves commercial, industrial and agricultural buildings alike, from workshop and warehouse roofs to grain stores and livestock sheds, and our teams apply it nationwide. If your own roof has started to chalk, streak or show rust at the laps, the economics are simple: coating a sound roof now costs a fraction of replacing a failed one later, in disruption as much as in money. Book a free site survey and we will walk the roof, photograph every lap and fixing, and give you an honest written picture of where it stands.
For the same approach on other building types, see our case studies of a cladding respray on a food processing plant near Swindon and a supermarket roof coating near Exeter.
Project completed this summer.
Standards behind our roof coating work
Roof coating on a live automotive site is planned around the workshop's day from the survey stage, with access, exclusion zones and wind limits agreed before anyone leaves the ground. See our commercial roof coating service page for how we approach every building. Our teams work to the HSE's work at height guidance, and we hold CHAS accreditation so the health and safety paperwork a site manager asks for is ready before the first van arrives.
For building owners comparing quotes, a proper MOT garage roof coating programme starts with a free site survey and a written route: coat, repair or replace, decided on the substrate in front of us.
That is why every MOT garage roof coating job we take on is photographed at survey and again at handover, so the record is as much part of the work as the coating itself.
If you want the same MOT garage roof coating approach on your building, start with the survey rather than a phone quote, because the constraints of a live site always decide the method.
Specification for MOT garage roof coating follows the survey, not the other way round: the sheets, laps, fixings and access set what is worth coating and what is past it.
How we work
How we ran the work on this project
1. BeforeChalked, faded sheets with rust staining along the laps and a stained, blocked gutter run at the eaves. The factory finish had failed across the whole roof area.
2. Washing downOne of the team works the pressure lance across the slope, the washed sheets showing clean against the chalked ones still waiting. Everything loose came off before any repair or primer went near the roof.
3. PreparationMasking taped along the gutter line and wall head, primer over the treated fixings and laps, and one of the team sealing the eaves edge trim. This is the stage that decides how long the finished roof lasts.
4. SprayingThe first band of anthracite going on behind a straight wet edge, worked away from the prepared sheets. The workshop below stayed open through every coat.
5. AfterJob complete: the team packs the kit away beside the van below the finished anthracite roof, walls and signage untouched. One clean sweep of colour from ridge to gutter.
6. DetailThe coating turns the corrugation ends and the verge in one even film above the cleaned gutter. The cut edges that started the trouble are sealed inside it.
How we work on commercial buildings
Survey before priceOne of our surveyors inspects the elevation in person and writes up what it needs before any number is quoted.
Kept open and tradingAccess and the noisy stages are planned around your customers and staff, so the building keeps working.
Manufacturer coating systemsThe finish is specified to the substrate and the exposure, in your identity colour, not a generic tin of paint.
Right across the UKOffices, retail parks, showrooms and business units, wherever they are in the country.
Thinking about the same on your mot garage?
We coated this mot garage near Swindon, Wiltshire after a survey, not a phone quote. Send us your building type, the surface and what you can see going wrong, and one of our surveyors will take a look and set out the route in writing.
Book your free site surveyWhy choose NCS
Why businesses trust National Coating Specialists
Survey-led, not sales-ledOne of our surveyors inspects the building, photographs the condition and quotes only what it needs - no pressure, no obligation.
£10m liability insuranceFull ten million pounds public liability cover on every project, from single-barn resprays to multi-phase industrial sites.
Accredited & auditedCHAS, SafeContractor Approved, Constructionline Gold and Acclaim accredited; IPAF-trained teams for powered access.
Up to 20-year guaranteesManufacturer-backed guarantees of up to twenty years, with the true term for your building confirmed in writing at survey.
Licensed drone surveysFully licensed and qualified drone operators survey large or fragile roofs safely before anyone quotes a number.
One accountable contractorThe team that surveys and quotes your building is the team accountable for the work - roofs, walls, cladding and interiors together.
Accredited, insured and audited
IPAFPOWERED ACCESS TRAINED£10mPUBLIC LIABILITYIPAFPOWERED ACCESS TRAINED£10mPUBLIC LIABILITYBook a free, no-obligation site survey
We coat and refurbish commercial, industrial and agricultural roofs and walls in place, right across the UK. Tell us about your building and we’ll arrange a survey at a time that suits you.
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Sectors and buildings we coat
Survey-led coating, spraying and exterior refurbishment across commercial, industrial and agricultural property in the UK.
Industrial & warehouse roofsCommercial claddingFactories & production unitsAgricultural buildingsRetail & business unitsManaged estates & facilitiesRender & masonryMetal cladding & cut-edge corrosion
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