Case Study: Facade restoration coatingmaintains outstanding color retention and extreme weathering performance after eight years of service in South Florida

Located along the Gulf of Mexico—just a short drive from Fort Myers, Florida—Sanibel Island is justly famed for its beautiful sunsets, iconic lighthouse and luxurious resorts. It is also an area known for its extreme humidity, high temperatures, salty ocean breezes, blowing sand and harsh UV conditions that cause architectural coatings to fade and degrade more rapidly and severely on the exterior of residential and commercial buildings.

Severe weathering issues

In 2009, a Sanibel Island homeowner decided that the appearance of his prized vacation property was showing extreme weathering and was in dire need of a major facelift. The area’s aggressive salt air, sea spray and humidity caused the original white paint on the home to severely chalk and degrade, as well as grow mold and algae on the shaded, moisture-prone areas. The building’s stucco exterior—originally painted with a construction-grade paint—was severely faded and flat, with no sheen to it at all.

With restoration of the home’s exterior long overdue, the owner turned to the professional expertise of painting contractor Ron Rooker, who has been servicing residential and commercial clients in Fort Myers/Sanibel Island for more than three decades.

Wanted durable, long-lasting protection

When it came to the selection of a new coating system for the exterior restoration, the goal was to create a warm, soft yellow aesthetic that would provide long-lasting color retention and protection against the elements, with minimal maintenance. The durability of protective coatings is vital to extending and maximizing color stability and gloss retention of building facades in South Florida’s coastal communities. In addition, reducing the number of repainting cycles in these highly aggressive weathering environments has become significant in the overall evaluation of life-cycle costs.

Selected as the topcoat for the residential property was NeverFade^®, a low-VOC facade-restoration coating that comes with a 15-year product-and-labor warranty for color performance from the manufacturer—APV Engineered Coatings. “Low maintenance was critical to the property owner,” said Rooker. “Because the coating system retains color and restricts mildew from growing, the home won't need to be pressure-cleaned nearly as often as it would if a high-end latex paint was used.”

Available in eggshell and semi-gloss sheens, plus custom-color matching, NeverFade^® is based on Kynar Aquatec^®, an innovative platform of emulsions that are used to make premium water-based architectural coatings. Coatings formulated with these emulsions provide the same long-lasting durability, extreme weatherability and color-retention properties as Kynar 500^® resin-based coatings for keeping painted building facades looking vibrant and appealing. They also resist fading, dirt, staining, algae, mold, fungal growth and corrosion, and can be applied to a variety of substrates.

While the NeverFade^® paint has reached an eight-year milestone, Kynar Aquatec^®-based coatings have been weathering in the field and in a Miami-based, natural-weathering testing site for more than 18 years. In addition, the first-generation Kynar 500® technology has performed for more than 50 years in harsh UV-prone environments, with exceptional color retention.

“For us, it was all about low maintenance,” said Mickey Ciriello, owner of the Sanibel Island vacation property. “We used to have the property pressure-washed and repainted every three years, which can be very costly. The past eight years have saved us thousands of dollars, and our home looks beautiful.”

^{Kynar Aquatec® and Kynar 500® are registered trademarks of Arkema Inc.
NeverFade® is a registered trademark of APV Engineered Coating.
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