Paint or colouring for External walls etc ?

[Sunny]

Hi to ALL readers,

We are now in the position of wanting to smarten the outside of our house up, it was built in 1981 and I do not think much has been done to the external walls with regards to decoration, you can see fungi,moss spores which turn the outside slightly green when it becomes wet and  damp.,parts  of the walls have black patches on.......which does come off a little with a wire brush, now it would be very easy to paint over such eyesores,but I do know that by taking such action,(masking the problem) it would be a total waste of money and effort on my part,simply because in a very short time it would be back  to how it is now. Having been in the building trade,I are quite capable of painting our house myself,what I really require is some advice from a genuine reader that has had to overcome this problem himself, .......the following are some of the questions that need to be answered,  (1) Should the external walls be treated with a chemical,if so what chemical which would kill any external mould,fungi;moss; etc ? (2) Would it make any difference if I attempted to power wash the outside before i painted. (3) Most houses do move (a lot depends on what is under the house) in foundations.......but from what I have seen in France, most have cracks which a good cement based paint would cure.......my question is, is there such a product(paint) that you would recommend to do my house with? If you have some of the answers, please get in touch

Thanking you

SUNNY

[Owens88]

and

anybody who has the answers please illuminate us all .

(imminent project looming)

John

[Quillan]

We had a guy come round two years back who travels around painting the outside of house, well he sprays it actually.

I was asking a friend who has lived here some 20 years and built his own house about getting mine painted because of the same problem that has been described. He told me not to bother painting crepie as once you have done it you are commited to do it every 4 or 5 years and it's very hard work.

So he told me to wash it with a power washer. Firstly if you have a bottle type despenser for your power washer use this with a mixture of 25% bleach and 75% water and coat the bad areas with this solution which is basically from 1M downwards all round the house. This kills the fungi. Now power wash. If you find the crepie comes of in areas he said this is good in a way because it shows that the crepie had not stuck to the wall properly which would mean the wall is not waterproof and you could end up getting damp in side the house (depending on it's construction). If the crepie comes off then it can be repaired and a profesional crepie guy should be able to match the existing even taking in to account the ageing effect.

Hope this helps.

[Liz]

I am assuming you have a smooth(ish) render. I can only speak from experience without knowing the technical details. We wire brushed and power washed. We avoided chemicals because of the proximity to plants and just a general sense of nastiness. If you have mould caused by damp check gutters etc to make sure they are not doing any damge with water overflowing. Remove any loose or flaking paint.

We used a Fixateur Oppacifiant from Brico Depot as an under coat and their monocouche Acrylic exterior paint that is guaranteed 10 years (there are others that are either not monocouche or guaranteed for 5 years). These filled hairline cracks and produced an excellent result. Neither of these products is cheap but they are worth it IMHO.

We had previously used oil based paints (with Pliolite) and these had only lasted a couple of years before looking messy and flaking in some areas.

Liz (29)

[Deimos]

I would suggest you get the paint from a reputable supplier and ask them. When I painted some of my place there were a load of different paints for new walls, old walls, uneven walls, walls with cracks, etc., Water based or oil based, etc. Also, I needed to prime my walls first.

When I purchased the paint (actually at Leroy Merlin) they were very helpful and went through exactly what was needed for the paint I had selected (again with their advice).

[Sunny]

[quote]Hi to ALL readers, We are now in the position of wanting to smarten the outside of our house up, it was built in 1981 and I do not think much has been done to the external walls with regards to dec...[/quote]

Hi once again,

Many thanks to those people that have responded to my questions,I do know, that what ever I have to do, to get the external walls looking like new again, will entail some hard work, to Liz,they are somewhat 'rough render' not smooth, also all our gutters are in good condition,......not going off the subject, I did notice that where my daughter lives, the overlapping roof tiles, (not the new ' L' shaped ones that come down over the external render) the old flat type that are quite common for finishing the end of any roof off......which has about a 3 inch overlap, does create a problem with rain water dripping down off each tile.......being persistent over the course of time, does in fact wash the colour out of the walls, causing a streaking affect,which really is another eyesore.Our house has blackish marks, which are on a light cream paint? colouring? also on other parts go greenish when the weather goes damp, the previous owner did say, that this greenish colouring does disappear when it gets hot......this we have found to be true. Like one of your readers,we had a chap come knocking at the door,wanting the job of decorating the outside walls of our house,when I asked him about a GUARANTEE in writing, he looked the other way, and said he would get back to me, which to this day,I have not heard from him.I shall press on,I have looked at the water based materials which are on the market at the present time,these are my favourable choice, oil based is not a option that I will consider,(knowing what the heat of the sun can do to oil based paints) It is a fact,that in this life, you get what you pay for!so what I finally choose to do the job properly will be expensive, this I know! I are not made of money,that is why it is so essential in doing the job right in the first place, Some water based paints give a TEN YEAR GUARANTEE, which is good,but this guarantee would, I rather think, be invalid if the base in which the paint was put on was not prepared properly, this again is another reason why I seek the advice of experts in this field, there must be somebody out there who can help me, your views are welcomed no doubt, by ALL readers,

Thanking you in advance.

SUNNY.

[Jonzjob]

We have just moved into our new house, yipeeeee, in the Aude! The North and West walls are dirty from fungus growing on the very rough crepi. An English friend had the same problem and he was told to use javel (bleach), the stroug stuff used for swimming pools. He did and he has a house that looks as if it's just been painted, it was done about 18 months ago. He was warned off painting for the reason mentioned earlier, having to keep on redoing it. I have done a small patch of our wall just using a small pump-up squirter and washed it off with a garden hose a few minutes later, not my power washer, and it's come up really well.

The javel I used is 48%, you use very little, there are no plants near the base of the wall and I washed the squirter out straight away with lots of fresh water. You have to protect any metal work...

Good luck and don't forget, when you are up a ladder don't step back to admire your work !

John.

[Quillan]

One last thought. Wait till you try painting it. We have Crepie in the lounge would you believe and we started to paint it. I bought a sprayer which cost me a fair few bob that did not work, paint to thick. Resorted to a roller with more hairs that a field of sheep. This worked well but my god did it do my wrists in. Of course once you have started you have to finnish and it took 3 coats to get it looking really good. It seems to suck the first coat in and appears to dry in minutes and it's really hard work, each coat gets easier but with breaks to rest my wrists it took about 10 days to do the lot and that 15M x 8M square. Next time I am having it plastered, never again.

The real rule is leave it just like pebble dash in the UK and just clean it as stated. If you do paint it show the colour to your mayor first, it's France and strange things happen here so get his OK first. He might think you are mad to ask but better safe than sorry.