This outer suburban house has a colorbond roof that needed some attention before any serious buyer was going to look at it.
Originally a light cream colour, the elements have taken their toll over the past fifteen years and the surface is now black, oxidized* and pock marked with lichen.
* The paint has deteriorated to the extent that powder sticks to your hand when you rub the surface
Rub the surface and the oxidize paint shows on your hands
The powdery surface can be addressed with the right cleaning technique and equipment, although, short of repainting, the cleaned surface will never get its shine restored.
We routinely achieve satisfactory results on old colorbond roofs, particularly in the lighter colours. In this particular instance the results were quite pleasing as you can see from the contrast between the cleaned surfaces and the old in the photos attached.
A picture’s worth …
…a thousand words
You can clearly see the lichen growth in one of these photos. For some reason fungal growth is more prevalent on lighter coloured colorbond roofs. Our advice is to err on the side of caution, by having a preventative maintenance plan in place. We recommend you have your roof cleaned regularly to guard against mould, and particularly lichen growth.
How frequently is something you have to determine yourself, as this depends upon factors such as proximity of trees (and type of tree for that matter), exposure to motor traffic and frequency of air traffic which all play their part in adversely affecting your roof.
If you notice lichens beginning to appear it’s important to take control early. You’ll notice in the accompanying photo that, at least some lichen growth takes place at the expense of the longer term prospects for the roof by gouging into the paintwork. In this case close examination of the photo reveals missing paintwork.
The lichen in effect works similarly to Cat’s claw creeper on, for example, a weatherboard house where the damage is evident even after removal.
Lichen sometimes eats away the paintwork
Notwithstanding all the problems encountered the completed roof looks fantastic, albeit from ground level and has probably added thousands to the selling price by making the property a far more attractive proposition to a prospective purchaser.
Just look at the after photos below …
Looking good …
…at least from ground level