DON’T GET A ROOF THAT WON’T LAST
Perhaps the greatest spray foam performance advantage is that the system lasts an incredibly long time. Other roofing systems boast a 40-50 year life as if that is impressive. And maybe that was impressive some 80 years ago, but now we have spray foam, which has changed the game in a positive way – forever.
An original spray foam roof can be expected to last anywhere from 20-35 years depending on maintenance, weather, climate, traffic, and exposure to the elements. That’s not a terribly long time, but is respectable. The real key comes in when you look at the life of foam after a recoat.
Recoating Your Foam Roof
If you take the protective coating on a foam roof, clean it, and re-apply it, you get what is essentially a brand new roof. Any repairs should be made prior to recoating, and then you really do have a new roof. This new foam roof can be expected to last another 20-35 years depending on the same factors as before. So now you have a roof that will last at worst 40 years and at best 70. That’s an extremely long time for a roof to last, all with maintenance that is less labor, time, and money intensive than other roofing systems.
After you reach the expiration of the second coating, make some repairs to your foam, clean the old coating, and recoat it again. You now have another 20-35 years to work with from the new coating!
How Long Can it Last?
No one knows an exact answer to this question. Spray foam is still only about 50 years old as a system, and it has improved drastically since it was introduced. With weathering tests, we can try to predict how long a roof will last, but it’s hard to know if these tests are accurate or not. Basically, as long as your spray foam roof is protected from the sunlight, it could last 80, 90, 100+ years with proper coating. How’s that for a long life?
