S3:E7 Cleaning Metal Roofs has never been so Easy - PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of an live interview with Paul Watts of Watts Removal Products and Christian Zimprich of Sherwin Williams. You can read the interview below or listen to the podcast here.

Speaker 1:
Welcome to Roofing Road Trips with Heidi. Explore the roofing industry through the eyes of a longterm professional within the trade. Listen for insights, interviews, and exciting news in the roofing industry today.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Hello and welcome to another Roofing Road Trips. This is Heidi Ellsworth with Roofers Coffee Shop, and I am so excited about this podcast today. We have really new, innovative, cool stuff to talk about today. We're here with Paul Watts, the owner and founder of Watts Removal Products, and Christian Zimprich of Sherwin-Williams, he is the marketing manager for construction products for the coil coatings. So you may all be saying, "Okay, how does all this go together?" But what we're going to be talking about today is really innovation from Sherwin-Williams, finding very amazing products that Paul has had on the market that helps clean metal roofs without hurting the paint. So all of those strips that get baked on, or moss, or sap, or you name it. This is the product that is going to help keep your metal roofs clean. So we're going to start out today with welcoming our guests. Hello, Paul and Christian.

Paul Watts:
Hello Heidi.

Christian Zimprich:
Hello Heidi.

Heidi Ellsworth:
I am so happy to have both of you on here and I would love it, if just to start out, you would share a little bit about yourselves and your companies. So Paul, let's start with you.

Paul Watts:
Okay, great. Well, thanks for having me on, Heidi. I really appreciate it. My name is Paul Watts. I'm owner and founder of Watts Removal Products. I have been in the graffiti removal world for the past 20 years, and my background is graffiti removal, clean up, pressure washing, things like that. But we have a product that is basically been out there for the past 30 some years, that's environmentally sustainable, non-toxic, VOC compliant, and it has the ability to basically clean metal roof, clean metal siding, everything from graffiti to tiger striping, to strippable film, to adhesive, to any type of surface-related contaminants that are on these metal roofs or metal sidings, and able to clean these up without damage to the siding and keeping these warranties intact.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Wow. You're right there in Portland, Oregon, and as a lot of our listeners know, I'm an Oregon native, just on other side of the mountains from you. There has been... I mean, you've seen some huge success with the removal of graffiti, not just obviously on the West coast, but everywhere, right?

Paul Watts:
Yeah. Everywhere. I mean, with some of the unrest that's been happening across the country there's been a lot of graffiti, a lot of damage, a lot of vandalism. We all know that these buildings have new substrates, they have new facades, whether they be pre-painted metal panels, the coil, the aluminum. Out there right now, there's been a lot of shoe polish put on the building, there's been a lot of crayon, a lot of marker pen, a lot of spray can, a lot of oil-based spray can, latex spray can. I mean, it just, it kind of runs the gamut, you never know what you're going to run up against, and unfortunately, you can say business has been pretty good.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, at least we have a solution to fix some of this craziness. That's the good news.

Paul Watts:
We do.

Heidi Ellsworth:
So Christian, I'd love you to introduce yourself a little bit and talk about how Sherman-Williams found Paul and Watts Removal Products and how that whole partnership developed.

Christian Zimprich:
Sure. Yes, I'm Christian Zimprich. I am the marketing manager for the construction product segment for the Sherwin-Williams coil coating business, been with the organization for about eight years. I'd say a recent focus of our, well, not a recent, but something we've really been emphasizing as of late, is just our commitment to supporting our coated products and especially metal roofing, long beyond when we sell the paint. So this relationship with Paul and his organization actually started a few years back. We were looking for a solution for quick graffiti removal. We'd recognized kind of a gap in the market, so we had various architects and different end users come to us and ask us about, "What do you recommend?" At that point, we didn't have a great answer.
So we started this partnership with Paul, again, really focused on his ability to quickly clean graffiti off these coated surfaces. Frankly, over the years, the partnership has just expanded. So, we did a significant amount of R and D work, a lot of testing to ensure that the products he has don't affect the underlying coding, and it just kind of blossomed from there. We have a number of use cases now where you can use his product to improve some of the environmental contaminants that just happen over time. And again, we've done the work here to ensure that the products don't damage the underlying coating. Actually these are the only products that you can use with our coated services that don't void the warranty here.
So we've continued to expand our partnership with Paul. We actually have an exclusivity agreement to work with him and get these products available to our customers and their customers, and ultimately homeowners with the metal roofing on. We're continuously finding new use cases as well then, that pop up. I can think of a recent example, might steal Paul's thunder here a little bit, but with all the fires that have been happening out West the last couple of years, we found that these products are actually great for cleaning ash or smog or soot that can come from those fires, really enhancing the value proposition of metal roofing.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Wow. That, yeah, because I mean, when you think about keeping the beauty of that metal roof on, it does get a lot of pitch, ashes, fire retardant, you name it. So Paul, why don't you share just a little bit, specifically how your products are working on metal roofs, and how, I mean, to know that you can have a Sherwin-Williams coating, and the warranty is not going to be affected by your products, is incredible. So share a little bit about that.

Paul Watts:
Sure. So, I mean, as Christian was speaking to, Sherwin-Williams has gone to great lengths to really vet our product and make sure that, put it through the rigorous testing on their coating. They've given thousands of hours worth of testing in the labs, and I actually was able to go out to one of the labs at some point and actually do demonstrations, and explain to the lab how our products work. Even though I'm not a chemist, I did invent the product, but the products have been around for a while. And basically what they do, not only from the graffiti world, but also on cleaning the metal panels from sap to tiger striping, to biological growth, to pollution and paint, even paint overspray, and strippable, is our products have a quality where they're made out soluble oils and alcohol.
And basically what it does is, the cocktail that's in the product has attacked the surface contaminant, whether it be paint or overspray or biological growth, kind of breaks it down, encapsulates that contaminant, and then suspends that contaminant in the product that we have applied, the Watts product that we've applied. It suspends that, lifts it off the surface, and then you can either use a damp cloth and wipe it off, you can use a low-pressure pressure washer and rinse it off. And then, when you're rinsing it off or wiping it off, it also has the added benefit that all the products have been tested and approved to be environmentally sustainable, non-toxic, VOC compliant. I mean, you always want to wear your proper PPE when you're working with a chemical, but this allows the end user, the growth around the building, whether it be trees or landscaping, things like that, to not be affected by the cleaning of the building, and then it can run off and biodegrade right into the landscape.
So it's really a cutting edge technology on these products to clean these substrates and these coil coatings without damaging the warranty, or even, some people think that it would damage the sheen or the caulking or anything else around these panels, and it does not. So, it's been really a great added benefit, not only to the person selling the panels to the end user, but also the customer that needs to maintain these buildings for 20, 30, 40 years down the road.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Doesn't it also kind of bring back a little bit of a shine? Because anytime you're cleaning products, of course that shines it up, and makes it look pretty cool.

Paul Watts:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, unfortunately when we're cleaning the roofs or we're cleaning the siding of the coated metal, it kind of leaves a clean spot right there. So, we end up usually washing the whole side of the building, to kind of rejuvenate the building again, and make it look back to when it was originally installed. So, and not so much that it brings back the shine, but it cleans the building back down to its original condition.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Nice. That is nice. Well, okay, so last year we had a roofing contractor call in, or email me here at Roofer's Coffee Shop, and it was actually somebody from Medford, Oregon, so another Oregonian. And he had film that had baked on to the metal, and he was asking us if we had any ideas on how to get the film off without hurting the metal and the coating underneath. And of course, I went to Sherwin-Williams and said, "Do you guys have any ideas?" And they took me to you, Paul, and you met with this gentleman from Medford, and it was a huge success. Can you share a little bit of that testimonial and what happened?

Paul Watts:
Yeah, absolutely. It was a challenge. We get calls about every week now, with leaving the strippable on these panels, but the gentleman had a construction site actually out in your area, I think, and he had these metal panels delivered. There was a construction going on, and unfortunately these panels were left out in the sun for a good two, three, four months. And you know when that happens, that strippable film has a tendency to start alligatoring, we call it, where it kind of cracks and you get these micro cracks in the strippable. And when they went to go put the panels on the building, and they started to try to strip off the strippable, it was just coming off in kind of eggshells. It would come off in little, little, itty-bitty pieces.
So they called me out, the products, our Watts Removal Products, the Clean Sweep, has a adhesive remover quality to it. Back in the day, 15, 20 years ago, there was actually some contractors that would use our product to actually remove wallpaper because it would break up the glue and everything behind the wallpaper. So we applied the Clean Sweep to the adhesive, to the strippable, and what it was able to do, it was able to penetrate through those micro cracks in the strippable, left it on there for maybe 15, 20 minutes, maybe half hour. Then we took a small pressure washer, at a 45 degree angle, and we were able to just basically just pressure wash the strippable off the sides of these panels, and restore these panels basically to original condition where if you were just to pull the strippable off from the day before, if it was applied. And the contractor, we saved him thousands and thousands of dollars because they would've had to reorder the panels and then get new panels out there.
And believe it or not, when I showed up Heidi, he had three labor-ready guys out there with heat guns and putty knives, trying to heat up the strippable and strip the strippable off by heating it up with these heat guns, damaging the surface, and taking a metal putty knife and trying to scrape off the adhesive. It was crazy.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Wow.

Paul Watts:
And after I showed him the system and how it works, he was able to get all his panels done. I think he had something like 320 panels he needed to clean up. He was able to get those done in a day and a half.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Wow. And that's what I love about our community, helping each other. How would they know? How would he have known that this product was out here, except for what you're doing on Roofers Coffee Shop, and obviously what Sherwin-Williams is doing by bringing your product to market, exclusively, with their metal panels. So, Christian, I would love to kind of take what we just talked about one step further because I know what Sherwin-Williams paint coil coatings is doing with sustainability, energy savings, reflectivity, all those kinds of things. And now you're bringing this next product to even longer service and maintenance. Can you kind of talk about Sherwin-Williams focus this way, to help the longevity and sustainability of metal roofs?

Christian Zimprich:
Oh, absolutely. So, well, Heidi, you know we're, at Sherwin-Williams coils, pretty big proponents of metal roofing, and one of the key parts of the value proposition of metal is just the inherent sustainability, and longevity as well. I mean, as many of your listeners will know, a metal roof can last two to three, or maybe even four times as long, as a traditional asphalt roof. The roof ultimately is that shield for your home, and it's taken a lot of the beating to protect the home underneath it. So obviously it gets exposed to a number of these environmental factors we've already talked about, but just the fact that it's up there for so long, having the solution with Paul and his product as an organization just gives us another ability to really keep that roof looking brand new, and really leverage the power of the underlying coating that has been formulated to take this beating and really keep things looking fresh.
So, we love that metal roofs are as able to stay up on houses as long as they are, and that they're inherently a long use product, and just being able to provide the solution to our homeowners and various contractors that we're working with to keep things looking fresh and new is pretty exciting for us. And we think, when people can see a metal roof that's been up for 30, 40, 50 years, and recently cleaned and still looking like the day it was installed, it shows the benefits of metal roofing.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Yeah. And the thing is that, what we have, the metal roofs, and then we have so many of these beautiful buildings across the country, more so commercial buildings, with the metal cladding, with the metal panels, that you have two different factors of really what is falling on the roof, and what is possibly happening on the sides of the building, the walls. So, one of the big, big trends, and is such an important company differentiation for roofing contractors, is their service and maintenance programs. They're doing service and maintenance out there, not only for building owners and on the commercial side, but we're starting to really hear residential roofing contractors or residential contractors doing this type of service and maintenance for homeowners too.
And so it fits perfect with exactly what you're doing, and the opportunity to really have Watts Removal Products in the back of every truck out there. So, Paul, talk a little bit about what you're seeing from service and maintenance on how some of the contractors, or even some of your other, I know you're in a lot of different areas in construction. What are you seeing on service and maintenance in your products?

Paul Watts:
So service and maintenance is a big thing. Anytime we can, with our products, with the Watts Removal Products, anytime we can give, basically, the general contractor that's working on these buildings, or even the maintenance guy working on these buildings, if we can give them a proven method of success, and what we're actually doing here is taking the guesswork out of how to clean these coatings. We have developed, in conjunction with Sherwin-Williams, we've developed a "how to" series with how the products work on these different circumstances we're talking about, whether it be strippable, or whether it be staff and algae, or whether it be graffiti. We've actually made it really simple for the end user that either owns the building, or is maintaining the building, to go to these "how to" series, how to use the product, what products to use, and let them achieve a hundred percent success on these buildings.

Paul Watts:
And that's what they want. They want to know that when they're purchasing this metal cladding or the siding or the building is put up, that there's a proven maintenance method behind them that is going to benefit them to keep their buildings looking good, where the contractors is not going to put up the building and walk away from it, and then the maintenance guy has got to figure out what to do. So I think it's a really added value proposition with Sherwin-Williams coil coatings is that it comes with a maintenance, just that, it comes with a maintenance system, a proven system to keep your buildings and residential houses clean.
Like Christian was talking about with the forest fires happening in Northern California and Oregon, and kind of all around the United States, what happens when the big tanker drops the red fire retardant on all the fires, and that fire retardant breezes over or is dumped on some of these metal roofs. How do you remove this red fire retardant that's on your metal roof without damaging it? Well, we have the answer, we can help you with that. And that just goes to the added value of purchasing and using Sherwin-Williams coil coated products to clean your roof. The maintenance person loves it because there's no guessing anymore.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Right. Well, and I think, from a roofing contractors, or even a siding contractors perspective, as you're looking at this, when you're selling your metal roofs, and you are selling your service and maintenance programs to go along with that roof later on, you're able to now show really a proven system of making sure of that, because, and I know all different parts of the country, but anywhere where there's a lot of humidity, if you start getting things on the roof, then things start growing on the roof. And so this is really the type of product that can help actually sell the re-roof, help sell the re-roof because you're able to offer such great solutions down the road. You may not need it for a couple of years, or it may be part of your spring and fall inspection.

Paul Watts:
Right. I mean, we just had a case study in Florida where it was a newer roof that was put on a couple of years ago, but a building adjacent to them was doing a lot of sawing and concrete cutting and doing renovations on their building. And what had happened is sawing and concrete cutting was blowing over all the dust and all the contaminants onto the adjacent buildings, the neighbor's roof. And he couldn't get all this dust, and concrete saw dust, and everything off his metal roof, and it was really making his roof look really bad.
He came to Sherwin-Williams asked, "How do I? I've tried everything, I can't get this really fine, fine dust off my metal roof. What do we do?" And they referred him to me, and we walked through a couple of different scenarios and showed him what product to use, and sent him a couple of metal maintenance kits, which we'll talk about. He did a couple of test samples, and then a day later he calls me and goes, "Where's this been this whole time? This is amazing. We're going to be able to clean this whole roof and not have to replace it."

Heidi Ellsworth:
Talk about sustainable. That's what you want right there. That's, that's amazing. Well, okay, let's talk about that. I mean, so Sherwin-Williams and Watts Removal are doing an amazing promotion on Roofers Coffee Shop, starting January 18th and running through mid-February, where you're going to be giving away six pails on maintenance, metal maintenance pails, a week, to six lucky winners. So tell us a little bit about what comes in that metal maintenance kit.

Paul Watts:
So the metal maintenance kits we put together, just basically as a sample kit for contractors, architects, building owners, maintenance people, to kind of see what product they would need to remove whatever contaminant or graffiti is on their building. And in these little kits, they come in a cylinder tube, and in this tube you have basically three products, actually two products, but one product is in different sizes. So our first one is our Crossover, and Crossover is kind of our multi-use product that is diluted five to one with water, that we can clean algae, and chalking, and tiger striping, and mold and mildew, things like that. We can put that on the metal, on the roof, with either a pump spray or a bug sprayer or a bucket and a brush, and then rinse it off or wipe it off.
The second product is our Clean Sweep product, which is for paint overspray, sometimes the contractor will get out there and paint the gutters and he'll over spray the roof, a black roof with a white gutter paint. That'll be used to remove graffiti overspray, adhesive, anything that's a little tougher to get off, we would use the Clean Sweep.
And then we give you a couple of little wipes, and these wipes are really, really handy for the maintenance person. These wipes are, they're a little towelette, and they actually have the Clean Sweep solution in these little handy wipes. They come hermetically sealed, they'll stay wet forever, until you open up the pouch. But these three main products are meant to kind of give you an idea of the strength to the product and the power to the product, of how it works on these different surfaces. It also comes with a bucket, a brush, a SDS sheet for everybody to have, goggles, gloves, because you always want to be safe when you use any type of product. And it's just kind of meant as your introductory metal maintenance kit to maintain your siding, your metal cladding, your metal roofs, kind of give you a taste of what Watts Removal Products can do for you.

Heidi Ellsworth:
That's so cool. I saw those wipes at the IRE last year, before, while we still were having trade shows, and I was just blown away with how well they worked. In fact, you and I talked about it at the time, I'm like, "Everybody should have some of these. They are amazing."

Paul Watts:
They should, I agree.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Christian, let's help, I mean, I know everybody can come online, they're going to fill out the landing page and get in this contest to win these maintenance kits, but how can contractors purchase the product and continue to be able to start having it in the back of their trucks, using it in their service and maintenance programs? How does all that work?

Christian Zimprich:
Sure, absolutely. So a couple of ways to get access to Watts Removal Products, one, you can go to coil.sherwin.com. Actually at the top, there's a button with service and program, and there's a dropdown and you can go select cleaning and maintenance. In addition to getting access to the product, we have a number of different pieces of information out there. We have just kind of a general brochure that talks about some of the cleaning solutions or scenarios that might be happening, and you might be looking to mitigate. We have several cleaning and maintenance brochures targeted at different types of coating we offer. And as Paul mentioned, what we have a series of "how to" videos that will be coming out here actually shortly, that Paul has done a great job of kind of condensing down, in a pretty easy to understand fashion, how to use this product and really get the effectiveness we're looking for.
So at the bottom of that landing page, there's also a contact today button, and that'll take you right to the Watts Removal website. In addition, of course, you can also go to wattsremoval.com, and there's a shop button there. And I can speak from my personal experience, that Paul is very responsive, his organization and his team, if you have any questions or just what type of product to use, other than just reordering, if you want to learn more, he's able to get back to you quickly.
So those are the two primary ways to access it. We, within the Sherwin-Williams organization, also field a number of inquiries, you can reach out to your metal manufacturer who uses Sherwin-Williams coil coatings, they can direct you back to myself, or we'll get you in contact with the right people. So, a number of ways to reach out, but the products are available and ready to use. And, like has been discussed, we've done the testing and we know they work, and we're excited to have this program out there.

Heidi Ellsworth:
We're really excited to be able to be promoting it. And all of this, everything that Christian just said, will also be on the Sherwin-Williams directory on rooferscoffeeshop.com. So you can find all of those links very easily, be able to get to those sites, to get to Watts Removal, to get to the Sherwin-Williams coil website, with all the "how to's", everything. So we're going to have that all on the site, and I think this is something that is really, it's just so important, that we have these kind of solutions for contractors. So, thank you both. Thank you so much for being here. Paul, any last thoughts? Anything you want to share about on this new promotion or on your products overall?

Paul Watts:
No, I'd just like to emphasize that we're always here to help either the contractor or the maintenance person kind of troubleshoot. There's always something new out there. There's always a new issue, always a new problem, maybe a new contaminant on the building. But I'm always available either by email or phone. You'll see, on the Watts Removal site, it's actually my direct cell line, so when somebody does call, they're calling me, they're not calling a help line. I'm walking them through and troubleshooting and trying to come up with a solution with them. So we're very engaged here and we just want to act as a resource to any contractor that needs it, and if he can turn it into a maintenance program on some of these buildings and start cleaning buildings and making a new revenue stream out of this by using Watts Removal, let's help the contractor make more money on the bottom line.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Exactly. Differentiation, bringing those new products, those new innovative products, so important, so important to every roofing business. So Christian, any last words or any thoughts?

Christian Zimprich:
No. I think Paul hit it on the head, and Heidi, the other thing I would just emphasize is this one of a number of programs that Sherwin-Williams coil coatings are working on to really help build out our value proposition, and help support our products all the way through their life cycle and really add value to the market. So we recently announced our Sher-Color program, that's been on the website and we have a number of exciting things coming up. So we're excited to be partnered with Paul and keep rolling new things out, staying fresh.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Yeah, I agree, and you know what? I'm so glad you said that about the Sher-Color, because it is so cool. I mean, for anyone listening to this, if you need to match your roof, your metal roof to your doors, or to your gutters, or to your soffits, or whatever, you're siding, Sherwin-Williams has, it's so easy, and it allows you to really be that exterior designer that we really are not, and they make it easy. They make it easy to make the outside of the house just look amazing.
So thank you both. Thank you so much for being here today. I want to encourage everyone who's listening to this to please come on the site, register for the contest, win one of these metal maintenance pails, but more so, take the next step to go buy the product. I mean, this is something that every contractor should have in the back of their truck. This is something that you're going to use, you're going to be amazed how often you'll use it, to just clean up work sites, service and maintenance, new construction, re-roofs, it's going to work across the board.
So thank you both for being here. Thank you all for listening today. And we look forward to sharing this under our Read Listen Watch segment of rooferscoffeeshop.com. And also be sure to subscribe on all your favorite podcast channels. Have a great day, and thank you very much.

Speaker 1:
Make sure to subscribe to our channel and leave a review. Thanks for listening. This has been Roofing Road Trips with Heidi, from the rooferscoffeeshop.com.