Can I Use a Paint Spray Gun for Roof Coating?

Coating Reasons

• Applying a coating to your roof using the right tools and materials can have a number of benefits. Besides sealing cracks and strengthening shingles, roof coating can add new color to the roof, giving your home a fresh look. Other coatings are transparent but offer protection for the existing color. Coating a roof can be preventative maintenance to help extend its life or a technique for addressing fading colors and moderate weather damage.

Coating Options

• The tools you use to coat a roof depend on the type of coating you want to apply. Lacquers and stains provide color by penetrating wood roof shingles, while paints form colored layers on top of them. Latex paints are thicker than oil-based paints, which are in turn more thick than stains. Block fillers, which fill in small cracks, are even more thick than latex paints, with each product needing its own spray pressure and nozzle size for smooth application.

Pressure

• Applying a roof coating requires a high-pressure spray system. This ensures that the particles in the coating adhere evenly, reach the spaces between shingles and end up on the roof itself rather than drifting away in the air. Airless roof sprayers develop upward of 3,000 psi of pressure, which is significantly more than household and automotive paint spray guns, which typically use less than 100 psi of pressure.

Benefits

• Besides providing adequate pressure to apply a roof coating, airless sprayers make the job easier than using a paint gun in a number of ways. Airless sprayers feature long hoses, allowing you to set one up at ground level and draw from a large reservoir of the coating rather than gathering materials and preparing your work site on the roof itself. Airless sprayers also feature interchangeable nozzles that are designed for use with heavy-duty roof coatings rather than automotive paint.