27-Johnstone UK Exterior paint schemes News 100707

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Johnstone UK - Exterior coatings - the first line of defence

With an estimated £1 billion per annum being spent on the maintenance and repair of the exterior of buildings in the UK, Johnstone’s Technical Team examines how social landlords can make the most of their budgets by using coatings to extend maintenance life cycles.
In the past housing stock owners have carried out maintenance painting cycles approximately every four to five years. But with continued financial pressures and the requirement for ever higher standards of maintenance and decoration, owners are now looking to extend their maintenance painting cycles to six or seven years.
According to BRE (Building Research Establishment) Paper IP7/03 Planned Maintenance Painting: Improving value for money in the medium to long term, simply extending a standard maintenance painting and repair interval by just one year could give savings of up to 20 per cent of the yearly maintenance spend.
The majority of maintenance painting projects are concerned with wooden substrates such as windows, doors, soffits, fascias and barge boards.
Conventional gloss systems have been around for many years and have proved invaluable in the protection and decoration of timber. However, over time these may crack and allow moisture to penetrate beneath the coatings causing further deterioration of the timber and subsequent detachment of the paint film.
It is not possible to stop the dimensional changes that occur in timber due to weathering, therefore flexible resin systems have been developed which when formulated into a coating allow it to move further than one based on conventional resins. This flexibility puts less stress on the paint coating therefore cracking does not occur as quickly due to the coating’s ability to expand and contract with the timber.
Flexible gloss systems have been around for a number of years now and have been tried and tested on numerous redecoration projects around the country. Tests and on going monitoring by the BBA (British Board Agrément) for example have confirmed significantly longer periods between redecoration have been achieved through the use of flexible systems.
After woodwork, masonry surfaces are the second largest area of maintenance painting housing stock owners will be involved with. Masonry is an all embracing term and covers a host of substrates including render, rough coat, brickwork and pebbledash.
All of these substrates can of course be left unpainted, however over a period of time they will begin to appear dirty and in some instances can lose their water proofing properties.
Breakdown of applied masonry coatings can occur for a number of reasons such as excessive weathering, due to air borne pollutants such as carbon dioxide, mould or algeanous growth or moisture penetrating the surface through cracks due to structural or surface defects.
Water based coatings have been at the forefront of masonry painting for years. These are popular with decorators for their ease of application, wide colour choice and the fact that equipment can be washed out in water. However drying of water based materials is reliant on the evaporation of water from the coating, therefore good drying days are required for these materials to dry correctly.
The good news for contractors is that there are solvent-based alternatives which can be applied in temperatures of minus and are shower proof in approximately 20 to 30 minutes. This gives us the opportunity to apply masonry coatings all year round.
Providing extended life cycles is not all about paint coatings; preparation, the quality of work and the expertise of contractors all play a part. However the choice of product can make the crucial difference in terms of timings and on-going cost.
As a leading manufacturer of paints and coatings, Johnstone’s is able to provide advice and information to landlords and contractors about the properties of a full range of products and their suitability for individual jobs.
Johnstone’s latest RIBA approved CPD seminar Extending Maintenance Cycles Through Paint provides a bespoke package of support for housing stock owners seeking to enhance their knowledge of coatings technology.
Improvements can only come about through education; from understanding how buildings and paint coatings react to movement and extremes of weathering to the most appropriate type of product and by increasing their knowledge in these areas, housing stock owners will be able to achieve a reasonable period between cyclical redecoration programmes.

Email: markh@connect-group.com