Protective Coating Systems for insulated elevated temperature cyclic-service equipment and piping built in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s have typical service life until major refurbishment of 12 to 20 years. The traditional coating system refurbishment for such equipment involved taking the unit out of service removing all of the old coating and replacing it with the same or a similar system.Over the past five years more cost-effective processes have been developed which allow a unit to be prepared and recoated while in service and (in many cases) without complete removal of the existing coating system. These processes using alternative surface preparation methods and new-generation elevated temperature coating systems give a projected service life after repair equal to or better than the original coating system’s service life.This paper describes several such processes and compares their cost and effectiveness versus traditional “shut down and re-do it all” processes. Figures are based on contractors’ actual costs for the different processes as well as comparison “pro forma” bids of the same project done by the traditional process versus newer more cost effective methods.