Gaco Asbestos Roof Waterproofing in Dundalk — Encapsulation Without Removal

Dundalk sits roughly halfway between Dublin and Belfast, beside the mountainous Cooley Peninsula and on the main road and rail corridor that joins the two cities. With 43,112 people at Census 2022 it is almost level with Drogheda as the largest town in County Louth, and Louth County Council runs it through the Municipal District of Dundalk. The town has attracted modern inward investment: IDA Ireland markets Finnabair Business Park on the edge of town, beside the M1 motorway and Dundalk Institute of Technology, as office and technology space.

New office blocks are not where asbestos cement is found. The sheets turn up on the older generation of buildings that grew up along the corridor before them: workshops, stores, garages, depots and industrial units that were roofed when corrugated asbestos cement was an ordinary specification. Many of those units are still in daily use and many have been extended or subdivided over the years, so a single site can carry several roofs of different ages and conditions. Dundalk’s weather is modest for Ireland. Dublin Airport, the nearest Met Éireann station with a full 1991 to 2020 record, averaged 772.5 mm of rain a year. Over decades that is still enough to erode the cement surface and leave laps, fixings and rooflights leaking.

For a business, the attraction of encapsulation is that the roof stays on and the unit stays open. Gaco urethane coatings, U91 and U92 being the grades used on asbestos cement, are applied over the existing sheets and seal them beneath a continuous waterproof membrane. The approved installer starts with a survey that records every penetration, from flues and extract fans to old rooflights, and plans how each will be sealed or protected. Broken sheets are replaced, the surface is cleaned without abrasion, and coating waits for dry conditions inside Gaco’s limits. Duratite supplies the coatings; the approved installer carries out the survey, preparation and application.

Work that could disturb asbestos anywhere in the Republic is covered by the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work (Exposure to Asbestos) Regulations 2006 (S.I. No. 386 of 2006, as amended), which the Health and Safety Authority enforces. The installer’s risk assessment settles whether the job must be notified, how a fragile roof will be reached safely and how debris and wash water are contained. Louth County Council is the building control authority, and TGD L 2022 applies if insulation is changed during the project. The island-of-Ireland reference project is SAICA Warrenpoint, Co. Down.

To get a Dundalk enquiry moving quickly, send a rough plan of the site showing each roof section, a note of anything fixed through the sheets, and the hours the unit is busiest. If the building has been extended, say roughly when, as the newer and older bays may need assessing separately.