Coatings Testing Can Save Time, Budget
An ounce of testing is worth a pound of very costly recoating, says the leader of SSPC’s Commercial Coatings Committee.
Testing can be used to improve and assure quality of commercial painting jobs, notes Ken Trimber, president of KTA-Tator Inc. and chair of that committee.
Trimber, who has 40 years of experience in coatings, recently sat down with Durability + Design to discuss the importance of testing in the commercial coating sector as well as new developments coming from the Commercial Coatings Committee, which was formed in October 2011.
The exclusive video interview is available below or at this link.
Why Testing is Necessary
“By testing where the areas of moisture are that should be repaired before coating application […] it gives [the project team] a good feel for what [it] may be up against,” Trimber said.
In many cases, the condition of the building walls is not conducive to good coating performance, Trimber said.
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Owners and project professionals can use testing to determine what should be done before coating application to ensure a quality paint job. He further noted that when time and budgets are tight, that is often the best time to test.
Testing can prevent owners from spending money and time on a repaint, he said.
Need for Standards
In the video, filmed during SSPC’s 2014 conference, Trimber also talked about his role as chairman of the Commercial Coatings Committee.
The committee’s scope of work includes the development of guides and standards related to surface preparation, coatings selection, and coatings application for the commercial, architectural, and institutional sectors.
Trimber told D+D why the need for these standards developed.
“When we started to do commercial building work, we saw a lot of poor workmanship, failures to do with the building itself, having nothing really to do with the paint,” he said.
Standards to address all of these issues simply did not exist, he said, “People were on their own.”
Through the committee and its various subcommittees, Trimber hopes to improve the quality of applicators, companies and the overall installation of coatings.
“Standardization takes the guesswork out of it,” he said.
