Dust, dirt, sunlight, rain and moisture may seem harmless. However, they can have a negative impact on your home’s appearance and cause irreversible damage, especially in a place with plenty of sunlight and high humidity levels like Tampa, FL.
If you’ve already invested in a high-quality exterior paint job, maintaining it in good condition will allow you to stretch the lifespan of the paint system, eliminate ongoing, expensive repairs and add years of life to your Tampa home.
As a knowledgeable and experienced painting contractor in Northwest Florida, we’ve put together a quick guide on how homeowners can extend the life of their exterior house paint in Tampa and keep their most valuable assets in tip-top shape.
Regular Cleaning
Product quality, surface preparation and paint application techniques play a critical role in achieving a long-lasting, high-performance coating that can extend the life of a Tampa home. But when it comes down to preserving a home’s beauty and prolonging the life of its exterior paint system, nothing has proven more effective than pressure washing surfaces on a regular basis, except maybe for repainting.
Neglecting to wash your exterior surfaces regularly will allow dust and dirt to build up, which will make your Tampa home look dull and unattractive. What’s more, exterior mold growth has always been a problem in Florida. In most cases, mold and mildew infestations develop due to dust and dirt particles that accumulate on walls and absorb moisture from the air, creating favorable conditions for mold growth.
The easiest way to remove dust and dirt along with mold spores that might have adhered to your exterior walls, and keep your paint look bright and fresh is to pressure wash exterior surfaces at least once a year.
Waterproofing
One of the most common causes of paint failure is the permeation of moisture or water in wall systems. Water trapped inside walls inevitably leads to aesthetic problems like discoloration and efflorescence followed by functional problems, including paint bubbling and peeling, mold growth and extensive structural damage.
Waterproofing can help you solve all these problems. To begin with, a waterproofing system delivers a highly protective barrier which, enhanced with the performance characteristics of your exterior house paint in Tampa, can keep water and moisture out. What’s more, waterproofing provides a sound, stable substrate for a new coat of paint and keeps the heat in during the winter months and the sun’s heat out in the summer, reducing your heating and cooling costs.
Touch-Up Work
Supplementary to whole home painting, touch-up work can help you extend the life of your exterior house paint in Tampa between two major paint jobs. Exterior surfaces exposed to the elements require maintenance more frequently than the other wall areas. While colors that have faded point out prolonged exposure to direct sunlight and rain, they also indicate the probability that the paint system has lost its elasticity, which can make the paint along with the entire wall area more prone to deterioration. Where a wall meets a trim surface cracking may occur, applying caulk and touch-up paint will enhance the performance and durability of the coating.
Unfortunately, many homeowners don’t have the knowledge, time or equipment necessary to properly maintain their homes. In addition, most painting contractors recommend repainting versus maintenance, and that’s because they don’t offer preventative maintenance services. But things are different at Performance Painting. Since “full service” is one of our professional mottos, we complement our meticulous attention to detail and excellent customer care with a wide variety of services that range from power washing and waterproofing to repairing and painting different surfaces, including drywall, stucco, concrete, wood and metal. To find out how we can help you extend the life of your exterior house paint in Tampa, give us a call today at 813.308.0388.