Allied Exteriors specialises in painting plaster homes and maintaining exterior plaster cladding systems (often called monolithic cladding). The paint coating system is an integral part of an exterior plaster cladding system and is critical to the weathertightness of your home.
We maintain and paint around 200 plaster homes annually and have painted over 4300 buildings since we started our business in 2006.
Substrate preparation is always the key to ensuring the long-term performance of a paint coating. Defects within the exterior plaster system such as fracturing, poor detailing, lack of control joints, missing flashings and poor terminations must be rectified to ensure a sound substrate for the paint system.
With a specialist plaster repair division, we have the experience and expertise to recognise such issues and ensure appropriate plaster repair solutions are completed prior to painting your plaster home.
We use a variety of paint coatings for painting new and existing plaster homes. Paint type selection is dependent upon a number of factors including substrate type, condition and age. Other considerations include location (e.g. exposure to sea spray), height (for ease of cleaning), repaint cycles and the visual aesthetics (i.e. mineral, matt, low sheen). All paint coatings have their advantages and there is no one paint which performs best in all scenarios.
The vast majority of our projects are painted in Resene Aquashield, Resene X200, Resene Lumbersider, Dulux Acratex Elastomeric 201, Dulux Acratex AcraShield, Sto Maxicryl Facade and Sto Dryonic. We also use various other coatings where a project has a specific performance requirement.
Choosing the best paint coating can be difficult and confusing for homeowners. We take that confusion away as we know which coatings perform best in specific situations.
Paint colour selection is important as each plaster system substrate (such as masonry, fibre cement sheet, polystyrene & AAC) has a different ability to disperse heat from the sun away from the plaster system. Excessive heat generation in a plaster system leads to thermal fracturing and will compromise the long-term performance of the both the plaster and paint coating system.
Each paint colour has a Light Reflective Value (LRV). Lighter colours have higher LRV ratings, reflect more sunlight and absorb less heat. Darker coloured paints have lower LRV ratings and generate more heat in the plaster system. For plaster systems installed over a fibre cement sheet substrate, the building code requires paint colours to have an LRV of 40% or greater. There is no such requirement for solid masonry substrates. However, industry experience has shown us that painting plaster systems in very dark colours will create problems.
Where clients wish to use darker colours, there are various ways to mitigate the risk of thermal fracture by using acrylic plasters, heat reflective substrates and heat reflective coatings such as Sto X-Black and Resene Cool Colours. However, these products only mitigate the risk – they do not eliminate it. Should you be considering using a dark colour paint, please contact us to get accurate project-specific advice.
Allied Exteriors is Auckland’s leading plastering and painting company, with over 5,628 successful projects since 2006. We specialize in exterior plaster and paint solutions and offer a 15-year warranty for lasting protection.