House Painting

[bankruatsteve]

I live on the top floor of an old condo. I've been thinking of painting the roof (over my condo) white to help reflect some of the heat. Eventually I am going to renovate the condo (built in wardrobes ,lowered ceilling [insulated] ) but thats a couple of years away. In the meantime cutting down on the AirCon would help.

Any suggestions as to what paint /primer to use.

Not sure why you resurrected this old post vs starting a new one? ANYWAY....

I just got some "BestBond" acrylic waterproofing for application in some planters I'm building. So far it looks like pretty good stuff - and it's white. So, if you're doing a roof, that might be what you want. It's a bit pricey and a bit heavy for application but should offer both protection and reflection. BTW: I got it for B240 for 1kg at Global.

[Pib]

I think if you compare the wear ability you will most definitely find the cheaper brands are the cheaper brands & you get what you pay for.We used 4 types of paint on our first house. ICI Duluxe won hands down. # years later when we tore it down to build the dream house the Dulux paint was the only paint that didn't require a repaint if we would have resurrected the old house.Contact primer is the best & you can lay a coat of paint almost immediately after compared to alkaloid primer. Contact cost more but again as long as you are doing good prep work & have clean surfaces you are painting on either will work. I would suggest using the same brand of primer to paint. you can use mixed brands but you could have reactions- the same in automotive paint. At any rate if you are painting the outside use the companies better paint I would avoid like the plague TOA or 4 seasons bottom of the line paints. The interior is more forgiving but the humid conditions here are hel_l on outdoor surfaces.

This new house has mostly ICI duluxe weather shield on the outside & Toa Nano Shield on the inside. both have top end polymers to make the paint last so you don't need to paint every 2 years to have your house look great like when you first applied it.

Good luck & pleasant painting. Just finished tying up the last of the painting for this house.

full two coats of primer especially for an older house.

If you use ICI paint on concrete walls "definitely" use primer. I used ICI Dulux WeatherShield Maxima SemiGross on my lawn/preimeter walls. The walls were in good condition, cleaned well, no loose paint, painted when dry, etc. Primer was not used in all locations. In the locations where primer was used, the ICI paint stuck to the walls just fine during the dry and rainy season; but on those places where primer was not used, the paint would bubble-up/come loose during the rainy season in some large spots usually on the top half of the wall. The ICI paint retains it's color in an outstanding/long-term manner, sticks good, and very stain resistant on a wall which included primer. But I got better "wall sticking" power using low cost 4Seasons paint than I did with top quality ICI paint. Would have continued to use 4Seasons paint except it's "wall sticking" power in a damp enviroment has a lot to be desired, color retention is poor for brighter colors, and it can turn green/black pretty fast when continously damp/where a wall gets a lot of water runoff. In my opinion, ICI paint is very good "when also using primer."

Although the color retention of ICI Dulux paint has been outstanding, I've had the same "bubble-up" problem with ICI Dulux paint on many portions of my lawn/perimeter walls, whether primer was used or not. Usually the problem has been at the bottom 4 feet of the wall...and the portion of the wall that gets the most sun during rainy season. The walls are only 4 years old, in excellent repair (only a few hairline cracks here and there) and I repainted them at the 2 year point since we wanted a different color (a yellow color) versus the white. My neighbors have painted their walls using other brands of semi-gloss paint such as Beger, ParaShield, etc., and not had the bubble-up problem....but within six months it's clear their brand of paint is not retaining it color nearly as well and more subject to black mold when compared to the ICI. Just something about my walls the ICI paint don't like.

After the flood which caused a lot of bubble-up, I stripped the paint from the bottom portion of the wall with a water pressure washer, used contact primer, and ICI Dulex Semi-gloss again. It looks great, but rainy season is just around the corner and we'll see if the bubbling reoccurs.