Do you have excess tar up on your roof after making repairs or getting a new roof? Sometimes tar residue is left over after roofing work. This is due to improper application or excessive use or just simple drips and splashes.
It can get on shingles, flashing, your chimney, and your wood trim, staining them black. This can give your roof a sloppy look.
Tar is designed to be sticky. This property makes it good for its intended use, but it also makes it hard to clean up. Getting roofing tar off is not always easy, but there are some strategies you can use to get it all cleaned up.
Roofing tar is a byproduct of coal production. It is further refined and processed with other petroleum byproducts to produce the substance used in roofing work. After processing, it ends up as a very oily, sticky mixture. This makes it waterproof and perfect for sealing and repairing a shingle roof.
Roofing tar is very durable and inexpensive. It can be used to fix leaks and as an adhesive. It is thicker in cool weather, but in the heat of summer, it becomes a liquid. Because of this property, it is widely used on flat roofs, as it can self-heal in the summer sun.
This is also why it should not be used on roofs with steeply-sloping sides, as the tar can melt and drip down the roof. On these types of roofs, roofing tar may be used to seal around vent pipes.
Although there have been improvements in the formulation of tar over the last several decades by the roofing industry, it is still considered a hazardous material. It is a petroleum-based product, and thus has toxic waste from its manufacture. Although asbestos has been removed from modern formulations, roof tar processing still incorporates hazardous chemical solvents.
Roofing tar is also hazardous to use. It generates toxic fumes that can harm your lungs and eyes and can aggravate symptoms in people with asthma or other lung diseases. Symptoms of exposure to roofing tar fumes include headache and difficulty breathing.
The National Cancer Institute reports that skin contact with roofing tar can lead to cancer if there is long-term exposure, especially skin cancer. Roofing tar is typically applied after heating it to a liquid state. This liquid tar can splash or drip. If it makes contact with your skin, serious burns can result.
Because the tar is so sticky, it is difficult to get the hot tar off of your skin quickly. This can make the burns more severe. To treat skin exposure to tar, the area should be cooled down quickly with running water.
The tar should not be removed from the skin, as this can aggravate the injury. Medical help should be obtained as soon as possible.
Removing tar from a roof, whether it is a large quantity or just some smaller cleanup, can be successfully removed with the proper tools and these roofing tips.
For smaller spills and drips, try to remove the tar using a plastic scraper. A razor scraper can get under stuck tar. Take care not to remove any of your roof shingle’s coating.
If the roofing tar is on a metal, wood, or brick surfaces, such as your roof’s flashing or your chimney, you may be able to wash it off. Use a petroleum-based cleaner or a citrus-based degreaser, especially to remove tar from metal. Dilute the cleaner according to the directions and apply it to the tar stain using a rag. This should loosen the tar.
For particularly stuck-on tar, soak the area with a generous amount of cleaner and let it sit for 10 to 15 minutes. This can help loosen and break up the tar, allowing you to wipe it away.
If the tar stain is still visible, use a stiff scrub brush to scour the area and loosen any remaining tar. You can use a wire brush, but take care as this can scratch the surface. Finish with a rinse of clean water.
On a concrete surface, tar is very difficult to remove. Since concrete is a porous surface, the staining could be permanent. Using solvents only causes the stain to go deeper into the concrete surface.
Spilled tar should be scrapped up as much as possible and rinsed in clear water quickly. In severe cases of concrete staining, you may need to apply a concrete resurfacer to restore the area.
To remove the tar from a flat gravel-and-tar roof, the individual layers of the roof need to be cut into smaller pieces and then removed. Doing this requires a carbide roofing cutter.
The pieces are then peeled up with a roofing tear-off shovel and a pry bar. This is a challenging job and can be unsafe for those not trained. If you are trying to remove such a roof, consider hiring a professional to do the work.
If you work on a flat roof involving lots of roofing tar, check first to find out if it is allowed in a rental dumpster. If so, you will need to bag up all of the debris before placing it in the dumpster. Roofing tar is very hard to remove from the inside of a dumpster container. It requires using solvents and takes a lot of time.
Because roofing tar is considered hazardous, some landfills do not accept it for disposal. Your county may have an alternative recycling facility that can accept roofing materials. If not, you can search for a recycler member of the Construction and Demolition Recycling Association to find a facility near you.
Using these removal techniques, you can expect to remove most of the dripped and spilled tar from your roof. However, in some cases, the sticky tar may just be too stubborn and stuck to the roof surface. Aggressively attempting to remove the tar could damage your roof. In that case, you may have to leave it on your roof until your next roof replacement.
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