Is a roof cleaner the same as a roofer?

Read Florida's definition of a roofing contractor slowly and it turns into a list of verbs, and the list says more about the difference between the two trades than any job title does.

Florida Statutes 489.105(3)(e) describes a roofing contractor as one whose services are “unlimited in the roofing trade,” with the skill to “install, maintain, repair, alter, extend, or design” and to use the materials that go into all kinds of roofing, waterproofing and coating. Those verbs act on the roofing itself.

A roof cleaner has one verb: clean. The method on a roof is soft washing, low pressure and a cleaning solution aimed at algae, mold and stains on the surface. Nothing is installed, nothing is repaired and nothing is altered. The page on how soft washing works draws that boundary in its section on where a cleaning stops and a roofing contractor starts, and quotes the same statute.

The roofing contractor's paragraph does not stop at the tiles or shingles. Two lines in it carry the trade into places a homeowner might not think of as roofing.

The first is wood. The same paragraph says a roofing contractor's scope includes “any repair or replacement of wood roof sheathing or fascia as needed during roof repair or replacement.” So repairing or replacing fascia, when a roof repair or replacement needs it, sits inside the roofing contractor's scope.

The second is coating. The definition covers coating “except when coating is not represented to protect, repair, waterproof, stop leaks, or extend the life of the roof.” Read the double negative through and the line is plain: a coating represented to do any of those five things is roofing contractor work. A cleaning is not a coating.

It is easy to say the contractor statute never mentions cleaning. That is not quite right, and the exceptions are what make the roofing line clear.

Section 489.105(3) defines a contractor by the acts of constructing, repairing, altering, remodeling, adding to, demolishing, subtracting from or improving a building or structure for compensation, then sets out seventeen paragraphs, from general contractor through roofing, air-conditioning, mechanical, pool and spa, plumbing, underground utility, solar and pollutant storage to specialty contractor. Cleaning does turn up in three places, each inside another trade's paragraph: “any duct cleaning and equipment sanitizing that requires at least a partial disassembling of the system” in the air-conditioning and mechanical paragraphs, pool or spa cleaning that likewise requires partial disassembly, and a plumbing contractor's drain cleaning.

What none of the seventeen paragraphs names is roof cleaning, exterior surface cleaning, window cleaning or pressure washing. Two of the three are tied to taking a system apart and the third is a plumber's drain; a roof cleaning is none of them. The glossary entry on Chapter 489 sets out the statute as a whole.

What a county business tax receipt does and does not show about an exterior cleaner is a separate question, taken up in the answer on what a business tax receipt shows about an exterior cleaner. The Florida DBPR's own advice for services outside a state license is to check with your county or city. One narrow line in 489.117 lets a local government keep a pre-2021 license for “rooftop painting, coating, and cleaning above three stories in height,” and why some rules mention roofs over three stories is its own answer.

The companies and associations that make and install tile roofs draw the same line from the other side. When they write about looking at a roof or fixing one, the trade they name is roofing.

Eagle Roofing Products, a concrete tile maker, writes in the Owner Information attached to its Florida limited warranty text that if inspection is desired or repair work is required, the owner should contact the original roofing contractor, and if that contractor is unavailable, “select another qualified licensed roofing contractor.” The Tile Roofing Industry Alliance publishes an inspection schedule rather than a cleaning one, putting a tile roof's first inspection two years after installation, and tells owners to take precautionary steps in selecting a roofing contractor for it.

TRI Alliance's steps for choosing that contractor, once a roof is past its installation warranty, are specific to roofing: pick a contractor with specific and verifiable experience with tile roofing, and check the contractor's licensing and insurance coverage. While the installation warranty still runs, TRI says to use the contractor who installed it and to make sure that contractor secures permits before work begins. None of those steps is written about a cleaning company, and a cleaner's estimate is not a substitute for any of them.

The tile association draws the difference most sharply, and it names cleaning companies when it does.

TRI Alliance's Roof Maintenance Guide urges an owner who chooses to clean a tile roof not to do the work personally or hire a cleaning company, and strongly recommends a roofing contractor instead, to avoid the dangers of walking on a wet tile roof. Its second reason, about what each trade would notice, is read beside a tile maker's contrary line in whether a clean roof makes damage easier to see.

The line where a cleaning's job ends, on a roof and on the other two surfaces, is drawn on the site's page on what an exterior cleaner is not.

Put the sources side by side and most roof jobs sort themselves. The table uses only what the statute and the tile documents say.

The broken-tile row has its own answer, on who fixes broken roof tiles and what TRI and Eagle say the repair involves. The coating row is where the word restoration tends to blur things, and the difference between roof cleaning and roof restoration separates the jobs that word bundles.