Roof painting and maintenance in Nairobi

This is the cheapest work on this site and the work that prevents the most expensive work on this site. A roof that gets looked at twice a year lasts decades. One that gets looked at when it leaks gets replaced.

Notably, search interest in roof painting in Kenya is flat across the whole year, unlike leak repair which runs fourteen times higher in March than in September. People think about painting a roof when they decide to, and about leaks when it rains. The first group is making the better decision.

Repainting a mabati roof

A coated steel roof fails at the coating first. Once the coating goes, rust starts, and rust on a sheet is a countdown rather than a blemish.

Repainting properly is mostly preparation. The surface has to be cleaned of dirt, moss and loose material; existing rust has to be wire-brushed back to sound metal and treated, not painted over; and only then does a primer and topcoat suited to coated steel go on. Paint over rust and you have hidden the problem and bought a year.

The part people underestimate is that a roof being painted is a roof being walked on, which on thin gauge means denting. We tread the crowns and use boards where we have to, and on a gauge 30 roof we will say honestly that the painting itself carries some risk of marking it.

What we could not find a price for

No reliable published Kenyan rate exists for roof painting or roof cleaning per square metre, so this page carries no rate card. It is quoted after looking, because the preparation, not the paint, is the variable: a roof with scattered surface rust and a roof with rust through the laps are different jobs at the same area.

We would rather have no figure here than an invented one.

The seasonal check, which you can do yourself

Before each rainy season, and you do not need us for most of it:

• Clear the gutters. In Karen that is leaf litter; in Lang’ata it is dust that sets into something closer to silt. Either way it holds water against the fascia.
• Look along the ridge from the ground with binoculars if you have them. Lifted or loose ridge caps are the commonest wind damage, particularly on the exposed Lang’ata side.
• Check the downpipe discharges somewhere sensible, and not against a wall or a foundation.
• Look at the fascia for softness or peeling paint. Soft fascia means the gutter above it has been failing for a while.
• Look at the ceilings inside for marks that were not there last season, including in cupboards and the back of the store where nobody looks.

Finding any of those in the dry season is a cheap job. Finding them in April is an expensive one, and you will be queuing behind everyone else who waited.

Outbuildings

Always last on the list and always the cheapest thing to put right while a team is already on site with materials. Almost every Karen and Runda property has them, and almost none have had the roof looked at in a decade.