Metal finishing Q&As since 1989

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Roof on house built in 1936

This roof started out as tin. It has been re painted with fiber coated aluminum paint. This has rusted after about 10 years. What we can apply to seal the rust and coat the roof, and hold. This was a 5V galvanized metal roof installed in 1936. The roof seems to be solid but has a rusty surface now. Is there a product that would seal the rust and prevent further rust. I am contractor, however, this is a personal property.
Thank you.

Thomas Livingston
General Contractor - Columbia, South Carolina
2005

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Look into rust converter [on eBay or Amazon] s [rust converter [on eBay or Amazon] ] - they are probably exactly what you want. Use the search engine on the home page and you should be able to find a bunch of letters that talk about them in more detail.

Good luck.

Jim Gorsich
Compton, California, USA
2005

Try a complete power wash with the highest pressure pressure washer [affil links] you have, then treat with rust conversion phosphate primer. These turn iron oxide black. Then give it a very light coat of zinc powder loaded primer (zinc phosphate primer [on eBay or Amazon]) - many brands are sold to roofing trade for painting metal valleys and flashings. Finally, give it one or two appearance coats of your favorite metal roofing paint. All the priming and painting can be done with roller or pressure sprayer.

Jack Wells
- Austin, Texas
2005

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I have over 16 thousand square feet of metal roof that needs to be painted. My biggest concern is that there is quite a bit of rust on the three carport roofs I need to do. Is there anything out there that I can use to make this process any less labor intense other than a wire brush? Or even a paint type that can be brushed or rolled on that will eat the rust and seal it?

Todd Clark
Apartment Maintenance - Muskegon, Michigan
2006 -- appended to this existing thread by editor