Does a roof need cleaning before it is coated or painted?

The tile association answers yes before it says a word about colors or sheen, and the answer comes as an order of steps.

• First, clean. TRI Alliance's Roof Maintenance Guide says a professional will properly clean the concrete tile roof prior to applying a clear coating, and uses the same words for paint.
• Then, for paint, prime. “The roof should be primed with a clear alkyd primer following the manufacturer's recommendations for application and curing.” Those recommendations, not a general rule, set how the primer goes on and cures.
• Then coat. To renew the roof's original luster, TRI names a clear coat of acrylic sealer. To change the roof's color, it recommends a high-quality acrylic paint.

One condition runs through the steps. “Different preparation and coating methods may be used depending on the factory coloring process,” TRI writes of the clear coat. The same guide elsewhere names two factory finishes: slurry-coated tile, which can oxidize and turn chalky before gradually wearing down to the concrete base, and integral-colored tile, which may lighten at the surface but keeps its base color. TRI does not publish a separate recipe for each, so which preparation a given finish takes stays with the professional and the coating manufacturer.

The sequence is written for concrete tile, which TRI says, unlike most other roofs, can be recoated if desired. That qualifier is the edge of the answer: the guide does not publish the same order for any other roofing material.

TRI does not describe the cleaning as a separate visit by a separate trade. It puts the cleaning inside its clear coating and painting steps, as work a professional with experience on concrete tile does before the finish goes on.

That matters because a cleaning done for its own sake and a cleaning done as preparation end at different places. A standalone cleaning takes growth and stains off the surface and stops there, the line the method page draws at where a cleaning stops and a roofing contractor starts. A cleaning done as preparation answers to the coat that follows it and to that coating manufacturer's recommendations.

Profile does not move a roof out of TRI's concrete tile lines. A flat tile cast in concrete, including the flat profiles Eagle Roofing Products makes to emulate wood shake, clay or slate, is still concrete tile, and the concrete tile sequence is the one written for it.

Two neighboring questions have their own answers. Whether a tile roof needs a sealer after a cleaning at all is taken up in whether a tile roof needs sealing after cleaning, and the sales language that lumps cleaning and coating together is sorted out in roof cleaning versus roof restoration.

Once a roof is coated or painted, Florida's contractor law has something to say, in three short passages that each point somewhere different.

• A coating sold as protection. Florida Statutes 489.105(3)(e) gives a roofing contractor coating work “except when coating is not represented to protect, repair, waterproof, stop leaks, or extend the life of the roof.” A coating represented in any of those ways is roofing contractor work.
• Painting as a job scope. Florida Statutes 489.117(4)(a)1 names painting, along with handyman services and pressure washing, among the job scopes for which a local government may not require a license, in a list it says includes, but is not limited to, those scopes. The glossary entry on Chapter 489 covers that section.
• Rooftops above three stories. Florida Statutes 489.117(4)(a)3 lets a local government keep a license it imposed before January 1, 2021 for “rooftop painting, coating, and cleaning above three stories in height,” and for veneer including gutters, siding, soffit or fascia. Why that carve-out exists is explained in why some rules mention roofs over three stories.

None of those passages says whether a particular business holds or needs a license.