Why Your Exterior Paint Keeps Failing – Wax Bleed FIXED

All right. So, I'm going to talk about a condition called wax bleed right here. And this is the condition. And the condition is caused by too much paraffin wax in the siding. Previously, they, you know, started making the sighting with more paraffin wax in it. The paraffin wax, it heats up, it rises to the surface, migrates through the paint, through the primer, the siding. This was the original sighting right here. It's going to cause all the layers of paint to fail. So, you can see I'll get um under here. There's three layers of paint right here. It works its way through the layers. And you can see the layer of paint. It's causing every layer to fail. So, this was a condition I discovered back in the days uh with Colombia paint and Columbia Chemist. It's a condition that really there's no resolution. Eventually with Sherwin Williams chemist, I worked with them. We came up with a solution using a fast dry oil primer. But like any wax, like a candle, you can't paint a candle. Nothing will ever stick to a candle. Like nothing will stick to silicone. So, the Fastright oil primer, what we noticed doing a cross-hatch test, it would stick, you know, um, for the first week, but we'd go back like 3 months later and the paraffin wax would actually break down the fast dry oil primer. And it's just a temporary quick solution that does not solve the problem. You might see some houses that are splotchy on the sides. The dark spots are where the paraffin wax is working to the top and causing the paint to get darker. So you can see this whole side, this is the heavy sun side. So this gets the heat and the heat is causing it to rise. The darker the colors, the um the worse the problem is. So one of the things painting it with lighter color so it doesn't heat up as much is going to like help you um you know with the situation. But look at that. What I noticed I've actually painted houses quite a few of the houses. What you do is you just tell the customer, um, this has been like this for years and years and years. It's not going to just literally fall off on the ground. It's not going to fall off if you pressure wash it. If you get too close with a pressure washer, you can get underneath it and start lifting it up. So, this is a perfect example is if I pick at it, if I want to make it peel, I can make it peel. But if if this if I didn't start peeling at it, it wouldn't have just fallen off. So that's what I tell customers when I paint their house is whatever you do just, you know, don't put tape on the house. Like put Halloween decorations, Christmas decorations with tape cuz you go to peel the tape off, it's actually going to pull the paint off with it. So it's a condition. It's a very common condition. Um it's been around, you know, for over 20 years here in um the Treasure Valley. So here's, you know, a paint sample. This was the sample I came out here uh to brush on here for the customer to try to determine colors. And this was one of the, you know, telltale signs that there might be wax bleed, you know, with this siding right here is I put it on there and it just started beating. It started fisheying away right here. Here's a sample right here. We'll show you up close. It's um beating. So, the paint's beading away. What will happen, as you can see, this is all like faded. This paint job. I don't know. that's probably 10, 12 years old, maybe even more. You would assume when you come out here to pressure wash it, the water would kind of absorb into the paint and it wouldn't just like bead off. Well, what happens with wax bleed, I'll start pressure washing. This is when I first typically will notice is I'll be pressure washing this. It'll be beading away on here like it's a brand new automobile or like it was just freshly painted like a week ago. And that's a telltale sign, especially with an old paint job, that you have this condition of wax bead because the wax is coming to the surface. Water doesn't stick to wax, paint doesn't stick to wax, you have um a difference in surface tension between, you know, the two coatings. So, the difference in surface tension causes this um beading right here. So, for the customer, you know, what you'd want to tell them to do is um we're going to paint this thing. I mean, the only other option really the true resolution to this for the customer's house is to resite it if they wanted it to be, you know, 100% resolved. Cuz once again, there is no coating that's actually going to stick to this. And I've tested all kinds of coatings with, you know, multiple companies and multiple um chemists from those companies, Colombia and Sherwin Williams. We're going to paint this thing. Whatever you do, tell the customer just leave it alone and it's not going to fall off. All right. So, we've got on this side a lot of um little nicks and dings. You know, we have the condition, you know, the wax bleed condition here. Short of just telling the customer just to replace all the siding, which would be super expensive. I can take and just do a simple, you know, solution and all these little nicks, I can just take triple thick peel stop brush over these nicks. It'll help seal those edges. It's kind of like a band-aid to a solution that's not 100% resolvable.