What does a roof maker's fine print say about cleaning?

The first words at the head of the Eagle document this page reads are “NOT AN ACTIVE WARRANTY,” and that label decides how the rest of the fine print should be taken.

Eagle Roofing Products makes concrete roof tile. The text quoted here is a copy of its Florida limited warranty kept by the Internet Archive, marked revised 103024, which is October 30, 2024. It is a template: it shows what the maker's conditions looked like at that revision, not the terms attached to any particular house. The warranty issued with a given roof, for the product and the date it was installed, is the document that governs that roof.

Even as a template it is exact about its scope. In its own capitals it says “THIS LIMITED WARRANTY COVERS THE STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY AND SPECIFIC MANUFACTURING DEFECTS OF INDIVIDUAL ROOF TILES ONLY,” and the rest of the text works inside that line. It also reserves a step for the maker: “Manufacturer has the right to inspect the premises and/or receive tiles from the structure to evaluate the applicability of this warranty.” Whether a clause applies to a roof is, in the document's own terms, a question the maker evaluates.

Eagle's exclusions reach the tile's surface, its installation, falling objects and weather, and two of them concern people on a finished roof.

The archived text lists its specific exclusions in one long sentence. Among them are color, surface cracking, chipping, topical slurry coating delamination, efflorescence, carbonation and oxidation; installation not in accordance with TRI installation manuals or local building codes; foreign objects falling on the roof; and damage caused by corrosives, fire, hurricanes, hail, tornadoes, earthquakes or other acts of nature.

Read closely, neither entry names a cleaning. The first is about damage and who caused it. The second points to another part of the same document, so its meaning depends on what that section recommends.

The Owner Information section is where the second exclusion leads, and its recommendations are almost all about weight on tile.

• Stay off. Eagle's Owner Information says “Walking on or putting pressure on tiles can potentially cause damage,” and gives Eagle's recommendation as staying off the roof.
• If someone must walk it. Soft-soled, non-slip shoes, steps only on the lower center area of the tiles, and never the roof tile as a staging area or work platform.
• Roof traffic. The paragraph opens “In an effort to avoid the inherent danger associated with walking on a roof,” sends roof traffic to professional contractors, and asks for caution to “prevent damage to roof tiles that may void” the warranty. Tiles broken by foot traffic should be replaced as soon as possible.
• Inspection and repair. The owner should contact the original roofing contractor and, if that contractor is unavailable, “select another qualified licensed roofing contractor.” Who replaces a broken tile is set out on the page about whether fixing broken roof tiles is a roof cleaner's job.

TRI Alliance's guide gives its own walking technique for tile, including one line for high profile S tiles, which Eagle also calls high barrel tiles: distribute weight on the high points of adjacent tiles. How the trade walks tile, or keeps off it, has its own page on whether anyone walks on the roof during cleaning.

One thing the archived Owner Information does not contain is a pressure figure. Eagle's recommended 1200 psi cap for its concrete tile appears in its separate 2019 and 2020 cleaning articles, not in the warranty text, and it was written for that one material, which is why roof pressure numbers do not travel between surfaces.

A roof can carry more than one set of fine print, and the other documents read for this page speak to different ones.

TRI Alliance separates the installer from the maker. For a roof still under the original installation warranty, its Roof Maintenance Guide tells the owner to contact that contractor “for all inspections or repairs so that your original contractor's warranty is not voided.” That is a routing rule for the installer's warranty during its term. The walking section of the same guide ties the word to damage as well, asking for care to “prevent damage to roof tiles that may void your warranty.” Again the trigger is damage to tile.

The Metal Roofing Alliance puts its whole position in one sentence: “Always follow the manufacturer’s specific instructions to help protect and maintain roof warranties.” It does not list the instructions for every maker. It sends the owner to them.

The Asphalt Roofing Manufacturers Association writes about cleaning shingle, including its warning against pressure washing, but its algae bulletin says of itself: “Nothing contained herein shall be interpreted as a warranty by ARMA, either express or implied.” ARMA's standing warning in the same bulletin is that, because it is dangerous to walk, climb or work on a roof, only trained professionals should do so. A shingle roof's warranty terms come from the company that made the shingles.

Put the documents side by side and the pattern is consistent: they tie a warranty to damage and to following instructions, and they are silent on cleaning methods as such.

Eagle's text excludes damage caused by roof traffic and a failure to follow Owner Information. TRI's guide ties voiding to damage to tiles and to who handles work during the installer's term. The Metal Roofing Alliance ties protecting a warranty to the maker's own instructions. None of the documents read says that a particular cleaning method, by itself, voids coverage, and none says a cleaning preserves it. The short version of that question, and the roof cleaning page's reading of it, is in the section on who should be on the roof and what the warranty says.

None of this fine print says a cleaning changes how long a roof lasts; that question is taken up on the page about whether roof cleaning helps a roof last longer.