Painters Beware: What is Wax Bleed and Solutions to Fix It.

This Christy Idaho Painter here on Paint Life TV, today I'm going to be talking about a condition on siding. It's well shown behind me, an example of wax bleed on houses. Wax bleed is a very common issue around here, boys Di Idaho and the Treasure Valley. This is an issue that if not treated properly, you are going to have problems with your paint job down the road. So if you want to know what wax bleed is, stay tuned for this video. All right, now we have a house right here sighted behind me and you can see there's some lights and darks all over the house. There's blotchiness and sometimes you're going to see it represented that way, what we call a condition called wax bleed. It's very common around here. You'll even see boards that are light, boards that are dark, intermixed or checkered on the house. What this is, I'll explain it. The dark parts are the part of the siding that's actually failing, not the light faded parts. What's happening, there's a lot of paraffin wax and wax hydrocarbons when the houses heating up are actually coming to the surface of the siding and bleeding through the paint, causing the paint to darken. Now the issue with this is these wax hydrocarbons are basically like a candle. If you try to paint a candle, the paint is not going to stick because it's wax, it's a waxy surface. These dark areas are basically a candle. A waxy surface caused by these wax hydrocarbons coming to the surface. And one of the tail tile signs, when I see a house like this, immediately I'm thinking wax bleed, but that's not always the condition or what it actually is. There's other things that could be. But when you start power washing it, this is when you'll see the next tail tile sign of wax hydrocarbons or the condition wax bleed. When you start power washing it, those dark areas of the house will actually beat up like an automobile, like a freshly waxed or painted automobile. The water will just beat on it and just run right off. If the water is beating on it like that, a water based paint is basically going to do the same thing, not to that extent, but it's not going to want to bite and bond to that surface. It will actually coat it all. It's not going to fish out or anything, but what will happen is down the road. If you put masking tape on it and peel the masking tape off, it will take the paint right off. You could literally get your finger underneath it, start pulling the paint off in sheets where it won't stick to those surface areas that have wax hydrocarbons on them. You have to treat it properly. But as a professional painter, I've done a lot of research with Sherman Williams and Columbia paints when it comes to this and dealing with chemists and coming up with solutions to this problem. This is a failure in the sighting and you have to understand that you as a painter, you can never warranty this. We've come up with a solution that's basically a temporary solution, but eventually the wax hydrocarbons will bleed through the primer that we recommend doing. It will eventually break down the primer over time and then that won't stick either. If you leave the house alone, if you don't do anything to it that the paint is not just going to fall off, it will be just fine. It's when you put something on there like tape, like if a customer, one customer massed how to fence up against the house, he's going to stain the fence. He massed off around the house, pulled the tape off and it pulled the paint off. That's the kind of thing that's going to cause the paint to actually come off and fail. If you leave it alone, it's like a glove, it's not just going to fall off, it's going to stay just fine. But you need to use a fast dry oil primer. We've tested all kinds of different primers and most of them fail and fail over time. The fast dry oil primer lasts for the longest amount of time, but eventually the hydrocarbons will even bleed through that, bleed through your paint and eventually it's going to fail. So you cannot, you cannot warranty a project like this. I have it disclosed in my bid packet that if there is a condition that you have, there's wax bleed on your house, I cannot guarantee the house. That doesn't mean I won't come back and do touch ups for the next five years, which is my warranty. I will come back with a guarantee that this paint is not going to fail due to a defective sighting. This is an issue with bad sighting, not paint that is bad or the application of the paint. You have to understand that. But if you warranty this, you are possibly going to run into major issues down the road of possibly getting sued in court and happen to pay a lot of money to remedy this and the remedy is not easy. Once you put that paint on this house, you don't disclose to the customer that you have a condition of wax bleed here. If they discover it, it's on you, it's your responsibility because you didn't notify them and you didn't notify them about the process you need to go through to paint it and that you can never warranty it. So I've painted a lot of houses in this valley and I've done them up to probably 10 to 12 years ago and I've only got a call back on a few of them to do touch ups where the paint was peeling off. If you do it right, the paint's going to last but if you do it wrong, it could be a big, big problem. If you just put paint right over the top of this without priming, you could take a power washer to it and the paint could just come flying right off. So one thing you can do, if you're really unsure, be for painting it, do what we call a cross hatch test. So we're going to put some paint on there, let it dry and then come back the next day. We're going to take and do a cross hatch test. We're going to take a knife, slice the paint, cross hatch it, put some tape over the top of it, peel it off and if it peels the paint right off, then you've got a problem of wax bleed more than likely. So that's what it is, paraffin wax hydrocarbons bleeding to the surface of the paint and the darker the color. The more it does it, it's very important when it comes to customers. If you have this condition, choose lighter colors because the houses don't get as hot, which will cause the hydrocarbons to not come to the surface faster. I guess I, hopefully I said that right, so it slows the process down because the house doesn't get as hot. There's a little bit about wax hydrocarbons. I'll show you the fast ripe oil primer that I'm going to be using on this. It's a product from Sherwin Williams, so it's an oil primer and it dries fast. We typically spray it on, load it up in a sprayer. This house, the only area that has wax bleed on this house is this portion right here because that's what gets the heat of the day and it gets extremely hot on this house. The rest of it is pretty shaded by trees and stuff like that. So the condition doesn't exist anywhere else. So I'm going to begin treating it. And then because it's a fast ripe oil, I can paint the house the same day, the body. So we typically will go around spray all the areas that have wax bleed on it and then we'll begin painting the body of the house same day, typically. So let's get painting. If you have any questions about this condition, leave it down in the comment section below and I'll try to answer your questions and comments. I got a lot of research done with the labs and chemists from Sherwin Williams and Columbia about this issue as one of the very first painters that ever discover here in the Treasure Valley with a house and a lot of extensive research with Columbia paints at that point in time when we discovered the issue and conditions. So I've got a lot of knowledge about it that I can share with you if you need any help with this condition. So leave it in the comment section below. If you've dealt with this condition, leave it in the comment section below. Take it seriously because there's a huge amount of liability if you don't do it correctly. Hopefully you've enjoyed this video. We'll see you on our next video out.