Gaco Asbestos Roof Waterproofing in County Armagh — Encapsulation Without Removal

County Armagh is no longer run as a single authority. Most of it now falls within Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council, which also takes in Banbridge in Co. Down, while a small area in the south belongs to Newry, Mourne and Down District Council. That split matters when a roof project needs building control input, so check which council covers the address first. The borough council’s area recorded 218,700 residents in Census 2021. Its largest settlement is the Craigavon Urban Area around Lurgan and Portadown, with Armagh city, Keady, Tandragee, Richhill and Markethill further south and west.

This is a county of small farms packed closely together. DAERA’s 2025 census records 98,480 hectares of farmed land under Co. Armagh addresses, the smallest county total in Northern Ireland, divided among 3,553 farms. The stock carried on that land is substantial for its size: 234,403 cattle, 85,278 sheep and 269,937 pigs. A dense pattern of holdings means a dense pattern of farm buildings, and where those buildings were roofed with corrugated asbestos cement, the sheets are now old enough to be weathered, mossy and cracked around the fixings.

Orchards add another layer. There are 1,488 hectares of horticultural crops in the county, a notably high figure that reflects Armagh’s reputation as the Orchard County, and growers need their stores and graders kept dry. The borough council also promotes agri-food as a core sector under its Food Heartland initiative, which brings food storage and processing into the same picture. A roof that has begun to leak over animals, produce or stock cannot usually be emptied and stripped without upsetting the business going on underneath.

Encapsulation offers a way to keep those roofs working. Once a condition survey confirms that the sheets and the frame supporting them are sound, the approved installer replaces damaged sheets, cleans the roof without abrading it and applies Gaco’s urethane encapsulation coatings. The sheets remain on the building, sealed, instead of being lifted and taken away. Rainfall at the Armagh Met Office station averaged about 824 mm over 1991 to 2020, so the county tends to offer more usable coating weather than the wetter west of Northern Ireland, though every coat still waits for a dry surface and conditions within Gaco’s limits.

The legal framework is the Control of Asbestos Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2012, enforced by HSENI, and a risk assessment and plan of work are drawn up before anyone accesses the roof. Fragile sheets mean the installer relies on crawling boards, staging and edge protection throughout. Duratite supplies the coatings and puts County Armagh owners in touch with an approved installer. The island-of-Ireland reference project is asbestos cement roof encapsulation at SAICA Warrenpoint, in neighbouring Co. Down.