Under the assault of sun and weather, all exterior paint finishes ultimately fail. It’s painful enough to re-paint the outside of your house every few years, what’s worse is when you have to do it even more often because the paint has failed before it’s time. When it does, it’s essential to get to the root cause otherwise, chances are, it’ll fail again and you’ll be doing the job all over again.

Paint fails prematurely for three main reasons: poor preparation, poor application, and excess moisture. Poor preparation and poor application are relatively simple, if time-consuming, to cure: start over and get it right the next time. Moisture problems are different because they must be solved before you repaint; otherwise, the problem will only come back, with each weather cycle doing more damage to the fabric of your home.

Moisture problems can sometimes be hard to track down. Just as it is hard to trace a roof leak because the water can travel some distance before revealing itself, so damaging excess water vapor from a kitchen, bath, or laundry can be even more difficult to track, since you can’t see water vapor and you can’t easily follow its path through the house. One solid indicator, however, is serious failure, in which the paint peels down to bare wood. Although the cause could be inadequate preparation, it’s much more likely to be water.

alligatoring	blistering	chalking	cracking and flaking
efflorescence and mottling	mildew	nail-head rusting	peeling on wood siding
peeling on metal	surfactant leaching	wrinkling