Polyurea

I can remember a VHS recording showing Polyurea in the early days. The main part of the video showed Polyurea being applied over Ice and Water. The industry looked at this as fantastic and many early applicators took this to mean you could spray over wet substrates. This led to early failures due to the fact it was misinterpreted. Polyurea’s are a Vapor Barrier (except for some relatively new ones). When the sun came down and heated the substrate the moisture would turn to vapor and when it tried to escape it lifted the membrane causing blisters. This teaches us you need to use the same pre cautions used when applying Spray In Place Urethane Foam. The advantage of a Polyurea (not urethane hybrid) is you do not have to worry about the relative humidity in the air as you do a Urethane, or Urethane Foam.

The Polyurea Industry got its first big break in the Truck market. The Spray Bed liner for the back end of Pick Up Trucks opened a big playing field. It was a natural. People throw things such as concrete blocks in the bed of a Truck. This caused rusting in the past and many trucks found an early grave yard. Polyurea is ultra tough and adheres directly to the scuffed prepared skin of the bed. Being a Vapor barrier became a big advantage. It did not even allow water vapor to penetrate keeping the bed of the truck rust free. If anyone questions the ability of Polyurea to last for extreme periods of time under the harshest environments they simply need to go to a shopping center and look for trucks 10 years and older and see how the Polyurea bed liner has saved the bed of a pickup truck.

Formulas are altered for different physical properties and we begin to see the Polyurea Roof Coating generation. The coating of a Polyurea over an existing roof is considered roof maintenance. With this definition a building owner can enjoy a 100% Tax write off in one year vs. a new roof where the write off becomes very long term, sometimes dying before it is written off. To look at a Polyurea Roof Coating physical properties many will find the Polyurea Coating to exceed those of many of the primary roofs underneath them. The other big advantage is the roof has no seams and even the flashing areas and roof penetrations are self flashing which eliminates two of the major contributors to pre mature roof failure. To me however people overlook the major obvious advantage, taking human error out of the picture. Think about if you have ever seen a commercial flat roof being reroofed or noticed the men on the ground ready to go up to start applying a conventional roof. Chances are, depending on size of job, you will be looking at 20 to 30 men. Have you ever seen a group of 20 to 30 men where at least one was not having a good day? Chances are the odds of that are greater than hitting the lottery. With those kind of odds would it not be a typical occurrence for one or more of them to be making mistakes? A good crew leader is used in this case to oversee and make sure mistakes are fixed along the way. This can be very hard with this many men working but any successful roof application can be attributed to this one man, the crew leader. Let’s look at a Polyurea Roof Coating Application. A crew prepares the roof for the Polyurea application a day or even weeks before the application. The day the Polyurea Roof Coating application crew shows up you will usually see five men or less. The Spray Man is the crew leader. He gets on the roof with the crew. The men are then instructed how to further prepare the substrate the Spray Man plans on spraying that day. He then leaves the roof and goes down to the truck to prepare his spray equipment and check everything for the days application. When the area has been prepared the men assist in getting the hose and gun to the roof, the equipment and materials stay below. When the Spray Man (Crew Leader) has assured himself the substrate is properly prepared and free of any moisture he does a test spray on a piece of plastic or card board. This assures him he can examine the instant set Polyurea Roof Coating to make sure it is correct and will obtain full physical properties. You cannot apply good material over bad so this step also assures him his crew does not have to do needless clean up. Now, the spray of a seamless Polyurea Roof Coating membrane proceeds. This is not a group function. Only the Spray Man (Crew Leader) manufacturers the entire Polyurea Roof over the existing roof. You have just taken 19 to 29 people errors out of the equation. Yes, there is a distinct possibility that the Spray Man will turn the gun over to the person pulling his hose as this person is in training to have his own truck and crew but he only sprays the Polyurea Roof Coating while the Spray Man (crew Leader) observes and will stop him from time to time to correct him on details. Again however, the Spray Man (Crew Leader) only has to supervise one man, not 20 – 30.
40 Years ago when I started in the Plural Component Roofing Industry we had very crude equipment and limited roofing knowledge. Today’s 21st century equipment has built in fail safes which will instantly turn the spray equipment off which will shut the spray machine down if the equipment starts spraying improper mixtures of the A and B side that make up the Polyurea Membrane. Many of your largest roofing companies in the world own many such machines and they have trained their men on proper roofing practices.

We at SoyThane Technologies Inc urge you only to use Licensed Insured Roofing contractors to apply a Polyurea Roof Coating System. Painters make good Spray people but unless they are qualified in roofing they do not know the details of making a good roofing system. Another large advantage of a Polyurea over any other type coating system such as an acrylic is it is a 100% solids material that starts to cure instantly and is unaffected by rain directly after application. Acrylics are usually 50 to 70 percent solids so one must wait until the first application is dry before putting on a second application. Most Acrylics take a full 30 days to cure. This can mean if even dew gets to the coating in that time you can lose some to all of the posted physical properties and unlike Polyurea which is a vapor barrier Acrylics will usually have a large moisture absorption rating meaning they are not suited for flat roofs that could hold water.