Identify Common Paint Problems
Buying a home is definitely a wonderful investment for most of us, and is likely to be one of the single most significant investments that we will make in our lifetime.
Giving your house a fresh coat is like putting a dress on a person, a well-dressed person can have big positive impacts on how others perceive that person, it also can have a significant mental impact on how the person feel about himself. Just like how important it is for a person to dress well, a well painted property can have a significant positive impact on its value, as well as the feeling and atmosphere that we live in our daily life.
However, when your house is having paint problems, be it wall cracks or efflorescence, it definitely is visually unappealing, and give out a run-down feeling to the homeowners. Often times you may think that paint problems are difficult to solve, the same problem can come back very soon after a repair or repainting. The truth is, one single most important thing to solve the problem and extend the life of an entire paint job is to recognize and identify the root cause of the problem and solve them quickly.
Here in PaintPros.my, we are going to show you a few common problems that often occur with your house paint, and how the problem can be solved. Of course it is always good to have the professional to fix it, it is better off if you understand the causes and supervise the whole process to ensure that the repairing process is properly done. Do note that this only serves as a general guideline, the exact root cause of the problems can varies depending on the environment, type of base materials, and many other factors.
List of Problems
Paint Peeling
Paint film peeling off often occurs when there is high moisture within the base material. Painting over a high moisture base material would result in moisture being trapped beneath the paint film, causing an outward pressure pushing its way out.
In this case the best solution is probably leaving the base material to dry before applying any subsequent layer of coat, in the case of concrete, moisture content less than 16% tested with a protimeter would be ideal to apply subsequent coatings. A responsible professional painter should carry a protimeter to ensure that the base material is fit to be painted, before carry on with the painting job.
Another possible cause is due to adhesion problem, commonly happen when the surface of the base material is glossy or dirty. In this case, all loose paint films must be removed, follow by sanding the surface. Surface must be properly primed with high bonding primer/sealer before applying the finishing coats.
Wall Blistering
Wall blistering can happen when top coats are applied on a coating that is not fully cured, or done with an improper painting system.
This problem is commonly found in single component solvent-based coating, when the surrounding temperature is too high, or the bottom layer of the coating is too thick. The former case forms a skin on the paint caused by high temperature that traps uncured solvent in bubble, and the latter simply lack of oxygen for the curing process due to the overly thick coating.
To solve this problem, simply scape off the blisters and loose paint films. Do light sanding if required, follow by proper primer, undercoat and top coats.
Blistering sometimes happen on skim-coated wall and plastered wall due to moisture. If this happens, the solution is identical as peeling, simply remove all the loose paint films and make sure the moisture content of the wall is below 16%, checked with a protimeter.
Efflorescence
Efflorescence is very common in areas with high humidity, especially in the tropical weather like in Malaysia. The one of the most obvious symptoms of efflorescence is brownish or yellowish patches that appear on the surface of your painted exterior walls.
The root cause of this problem is the migration of water-soluble salts commonly found in different types of minerals, plaster or skim coat, from within the high moisture wall to the surface. Efflorescence can appear as powdery substance or crystalized solid and would require a special treatment to fix it.
In many instances, the presence of moisture can possibly come from :
- Wall cracks caused by earth movement or construction allowing rainwater or moisture seeping into a wall.
- Groundwater wicking into the wall
In order to solve this problem, the best solution is to have professional painting contractor to inspect and identify the root cause of the problems, and fix with proper building materials according to the root problem identified that is causing efflorescence.
Be sure to make sure that your painting contractor check the wall moisture with a protimeter to make sure your wall moisture level is less than 16% before starting a painting job. This small step helps to ensure that the wall is fit for painting and prevent future problems caused by wall moisture.
If proper building material is used with proper exterior painting system, it is easy to minimize the chance or delay efflorescence from coming back again. And of course, applying a high performing exterior paint products such as problem-targeting wall sealer from reputable manufacturer after would definitely help your exterior wall coating to last longer.
Chalking
Chalking is a problem with paint having powdery or dusty surface. It is also one of the reasons to not use low quality economy paint from some small unestablished brands. It can happen if the formulation of the paint has a relatively low resin ratio in order to cut cost. It is commonly found on economy grade interior products in many unestablished brands in the market.
Efflorescence at the early stage can present some powdery minerals on wall surface as well. One way to identify the whether it is coming from efflorescence or simply just from the poorly formulated low quality paint, is to test the wall moisture level with a protimeter.
Another example of this problem is commonly happened on Epoxy paints due to its nature of degradation of epoxy from exposure to ultra violet (UV). When the case happens, there will be some white or yellowish powdery substances on the paint film, and to solve this problem is to simply apply a UV resisting top coat such as Polyurethane or Acrylic base top coat to act as a protective layer to epoxy coating.
Hairline Cracks
Minor hairline cracks can appear due to earth or wall movements. These wall cracks allows moisture to enter the wall and a lot of problems can come after that. If you happen to spot cracks on your wall, it is better to act fast to repair those cracks before it extends to affect larger area.
Hairline cracks of less than 0.3mm can be easily solved by applying proper elastomeric membrane before painting. Professional painting applicators from Paint Pros will follow the Paint Pros solution of applying a layer of waterproofing grade pure acrylic elastomeric coating like the Nippon Flex 200 to bridge up the gap before applying wall sealer and finishing.
However, cracks that are larger than 0.3mm are consider as structural crack which would require proper concrete repair to be done before painting.
Fungus
Commonly found to happen in high humidity areas such as seaside and highlands such as Genting Highland in Malaysia. Walls that have fungus on it normally leave fungal spores beneath the surface and cannot be removed totally simply by removing the paint films.
A professional house painter would firstly remove the affected areas by pressure washing, follow by applying suitable fungicide and leave it for minimum 24 hours to eliminate fungal spores before carry out any painting job.
Rusty Metal
One of the most common problems that we face in Malaysia is majority of the painters do not apply anti-rust primer for painting metalwork. It is very unfortunate that the common practice in Malaysia of painting metal is directly applying undercoat on bare metal surface, follow by finishing colour coats. This in turn resulting in metalwork to rust rather quickly as the metal is not properly primed, instead coated with undercoat which do not have any anti-rust property.
The solution for this is really simple, which is to get your metalwork properly primed with anti-rush primer. There are two commonly used conventional primers that provide anti-rust property, they are either by applying a layer of chemically stable oxidized iron (Red Oxide) as barrier, or utilizing sacrificial metal such as Zinc as protection. The former method is best to be applied on rusty surface as Red Oxide can adhere nicely on rusty surface, the latter, however, has better anti-corrosion performance.
Conclusion
The information here are merely for your understanding of the various common paint problems. It is recommended that you approach professional painting contractors to assisting in solving the problem and provide a quality painting job that is able to last for an extended period of time. However, by mastering the basics of various problems and the solutions, you are able to supervise the job more effectively to ensure a smooth repainting job for your dream house to look amazing again.
Summary
Peeling
It is normally caused by incorrect painting system, that is why a proper painting system consisting of base coat, intermediate coat, and finishing coats are recommended in every most painting jobs.
Blister
Caused by partially cured intermediate coat, causing pressure to push out towards the top coat. Need to scrape off the problematic paint films and apply with proper painting system.
Efflorescence
Caused by migration of soluble salts from within the high moisture wall to surface. The crystallized salts are then formed on the wall surface causing unpleasant looking patches on wall.
Chalking
Commonly caused by using low quality paint, or simply from skim-coated or plastered powdery surfaces. Specific types of high adhesion sealer need to be applied before subsequent finishing coats. Can also happen on epoxy paints that are exposed to UV.
Hairline Cracks
Usually caused by earth/wall movements. Minor cracks like this (<0.3mm) can be easily solved by applying proper elastomeric membrane before painting. Do note that larger structural cracks would require proper concrete repair to be done before painting.
Fungus
Commonly found in high humidity areas. Fungus can leave fungal spores beneath wall surfaces, it is wise to apply proper fungicide to eliminate fungal spores before applying subsequent coatings.
Rusty Metal
Commonly happen on poorly primed or not primed metal. Remove all loose paint films, do light sanding, and prime with Red Oxide Primer before subsequent painting.
We have a total solutions for all types of wall problems, do reach out to us for a free consultation.