Painting Maintenance for Community Associations by Arthur Raybold

Maintenance. The word keeps popping up. Health maintenance organizations. "high maintenance" partners maintaining our military readiness. the maintenance of corporate teamwork. In the community association industry, the word maintenance is usually spoken in reference to association properties: Maintain now or pay a much bigger price down the line.

Painting maintenance is no different from the maintenance of roofing, landscaping or parking areas. You have to get out there and look for your problems, address them and then execute your plan based on resources. The following are some of the critical areas affecting painting maintenance.

Wrought Iron Fencing and Railings

Wrought iron fencing and railings should be repainted every two to three years or whenever the rust starts to appear. Wrought iron used as fencing around landscaping is exposed to constant watering. If it is not maintained regularly you will end up replacing entire sections of fencing.

In early 1996, we were introduced to a master-planned community whose miles of wrought iron fences were wrapped in ice plant and watered copiously by sprinklers for good measure. There were hundreds of yards in which the lower horizontal bars of the fence were simply rotted away. It was too late to maintain this fence. A whole new fence system had to be installed.

Wrought iron used on balcony rails and stairways will probably last longer than fencing because it will be exposed to less water in those areas. However, you will want to paint these areas every three to five years depending on where you live and how they are holding up.

Wood Fencing

The average repainting period for wood fencing is between three and five years. As with any type of fencing, constant exposure to watering causes these areas to deteriorate more rapidly than your eaves and trim. When the paint starts peeling it is time to repaint.

Wood Trim and Siding

Semi-transparent stains on wood siding will need to be recoated every two to three years. Solid color stains will last five years and good 100 percent acrylic paint in these areas will last five to ten years. In the case of wood trim, whether it's fascia, railings, siding or fencing, if you are not using good paints over carefully prepared wood, you will experience wood rot.

We are about to begin repainting a project with extensive wood railings. The wood gives easily to a finger and thumb pressure, indicating that the wood is rotten beneath the existing paint. These railings were not properly maintained. Now it is necessary, at substantial extra expense, to remove the rotted wood, and in some cases the entire railing, before painting.

Stucco

If your stucco is not painted you will want to powerwash it regularly to eliminate the staining that occurs from roof runoff, mildew and pollutants. We recommend power washing every one to two years, depending on how porous your stucco is and how quickly it stains. Once the stucco becomes severely stained the only way to get the stain out is to paint it.

It is very distressing to receive calls from associations that are beyond the point of no return. Power washing is not a panacea for severely stained stucco. Usually when this situation occurs, there is no money in the reserves for a repaint. If the stucco has been painted with a good 100 percent acrylic paint, you should not have to repaint it again for 10 years. You may want to power wash it once or twice during this period for aesthetic reasons, but it is not necessary.

Chalking

If you wipe your hands across a painted surface and your palm picks up a lot of white residue, the paint is chalking and its time to repaint. Do not delay. If a painting contractor cannot eliminate the chalky surface with a powerwasher, then he will have to add a special primer to fix this condition.

Watering

Keep sprinklers on the landscaping and off the buildings and fencing. Watering your building is what causes most of the damage that we as painting contractors have to fix. It causes efflorescence, mildew, cracking, paint delaminating and rust.

I like the Latin derivation of the word maintenance " to hold in the hand." If you don't hold your property in your hand, who will? So, get out there and get a grip on reality by regularly diagnosing your property's needs. Only in this way can you preserve your property's value.