What is the difference between roof cleaning and roof restoration?

Search the documents a roofing question in Florida actually rests on, the contractor statute, the tile association's maintenance guide and the makers' own articles, for the word restoration as the name of a job, and it is not there. The nearest thing is a verb, in a sentence about growth.

The Tile Roofing Industry Alliance writes that mildew, algae and moss do not grow directly on tile but on the dust and organic material that settles on it. Then: “While this growth can result in a dull surface appearance, it can be treated to restore the original look.” Read the sentence for its grammar. What gets treated is the growth. What gets restored is a look. Nothing in it describes rebuilding, resurfacing or renewing the roof.

Florida's definition of a roofing contractor, in Florida Statutes 489.105(3)(e), uses a different vocabulary: install, maintain, repair, alter and extend all kinds of roofing, waterproofing and coating. Restoration is not one of its words. So when a proposal calls a job roof restoration, the name tells you nothing about which of those jobs, if any, is in it.

The roof cleaning page on this site uses the word about appearance too, in its heading “Restore curb appeal,” and 239 Exteriors describes roof cleaning as work that removes organic buildup while “helping protect the look of your home.” Whether a cleaned roof actually looks new is its own question, answered in whether a roof looks new after cleaning.

TRI is equally plain that the look does not stay restored by itself: it knows of no job-site coating that keeps the growth away for long, and says treatment can be repeated if the growth returns. Whether anything fastened to a roof does better is argued in the answer on whether zinc strips stop roof algae.

Take roof restoration apart and the jobs it can stand for come to four. The sources treat each one separately and hand it to a named kind of worker.

The two middle rows are where most of the confusion lives. TRI Alliance says a concrete tile roof can be recoated, recommends a professional with concrete tile experience for any work on such a roof, and names an acrylic sealer for a clear coat and an acrylic paint for a color change. Whether a concrete tile roof needs a sealer after a cleaning at all is answered in whether a tile roof needs sealing after cleaning, and the order TRI gives for cleaning, priming and coating is set out in whether a roof needs cleaning before it is coated or painted.

The last row is a different kind of line. It is not about materials but about what the coating is represented to do, and it is the reason a proposal's wording matters. How that line separates the two trades overall is laid out in the answer on whether a roof cleaner is the same as a roofer.

TRI explains fading separately from growth, and its line that periodic cleaning and resealing can prolong a tile's surface finish is read in its own scope in whether roof cleaning helps a roof last longer.

Because the word has no fixed meaning, the useful questions are the ones that turn it back into jobs. None of them needs a roofer's eye, only a close reading.

• Which jobs are in it? A cleaning, a clear coat, paint, or a coating with a stated purpose. Each is a separate line of work in the sources.
• What is any coating said to do? Where the proposal describes a coating represented to protect, repair, waterproof, stop leaks, or extend the life of the roof, Florida Statutes 489.105(3)(e) puts that coating with a roofing contractor.
• What is said about growth coming back? TRI's position is that no known job-site coating has a long-term preventative effect on it.

Where the proposal is a cleaning, it should read like one, and the line where a cleaning's job ends is drawn on the site's page on what an exterior cleaner is not.