The question behind the question
Nobody asks whether it is legal to paint a roof. They ask whether it is legal to paint this roof, because somebody has told them that asbestos is banned, and banned sounds like it should mean the sheets are contraband sitting over their kitchen.
What was prohibited in South Africa was the manufacture, import, export, sale and new installation of asbestos and asbestos containing materials. That happened in 2008. What was not prohibited, because it would have been impossible, was the continued existence of the millions of square metres of asbestos cement sheeting already nailed onto buildings across the country. Those roofs were not declared illegal. They were placed under a management obligation.
Management is the word to hold onto. The entire regulatory logic around asbestos in place is that the material is at its most dangerous when it is disturbed, and comparatively benign when it is intact, undisturbed and sealed. So the framework does not order you to rip it off. It orders you not to make a mess of it.
Where the legal line actually sits
The line is drawn at disturbance, not at contact. Work that breaks, cuts, drills, grinds, sands, blasts or removes asbestos containing material is asbestos work in the regulatory sense, and it carries real obligations: a registered contractor, a plan of work, notification, air monitoring where required, and hazardous waste disposal with a manifest and a certificate at the end of it.
Applying a coating to the surface of sound sheeting that stays exactly where it is does not break, cut or remove anything. That is why encapsulation is treated worldwide as a management method rather than as removal, and it is why schools, factories, hospitals and farm buildings have been encapsulated rather than stripped for the last three decades.
What a compliant coating job looks like from the ground
If you are watching a crew work on your roof, here is what should be happening. Cleaning is done by hand, gently, with water and soft tools rather than pressure. Moss and lichen are lifted and treated rather than blasted. Nobody has an angle grinder, a wire wheel or a pressure washer on the roof at any point. Nothing is drilled. No sheet is lifted to look underneath.
Then a penetrating primer goes over the whole sheeted area, because the chalky weathered face has to be bound back into a surface before anything can stick to it. Then the leak paths get reinforced individually: every bolt head, every side lap, every end lap, the ridge, the valleys, the flashings. Then the membrane is built up in three coats to a specified thickness.
When we tell you no
There is a version of this roof we will not coat. Sheets that are perforated, shattered, delaminating or already crumbling cannot be managed with a membrane, because the substrate itself is failing. A coating over a sheet that is coming apart is money spent on postponing a decision by a year or two.
In that case the honest answer is removal, and removal is not our work. We do not remove, cut, break, drill or dispose of asbestos. We will tell you at the inspection, with photographs, and you take it to a registered asbestos removal contractor. We would rather lose the job than sell you a membrane that has nothing to hold onto.
Nothing on this page is legal advice or a specification for your building. It is what we have learned putting liquid rubber over sheeted roofs across Durbanville and greater Cape Town, and the regulations are the regulations regardless of what any contractor tells you.
Common questions
No pressure
If you would like a second opinion on your own property, we will come and look.
The inspection is free, you get the findings in writing with photographs, and you are under no obligation to do anything with them.