Does anyone have any experience (or an opinion) with Behr's Premium Plus "Ultra" exterior paint? The Utra line was recently introduced; priced between $31 (flat) and $33 (satin). The marketing hype is -- "paint and primer in one", use of nano-technology for better adhesion, etc. Does anyone have any experience with this new paint? My application is my old house in Vermont. Since I will be spending the majority of my time preparing the house for painting, I want to use a good quality, lasting paint.
Consumer reports tests paint every few years. I'm always surprised that the very expensive brands offer little if any advantage over the generic brands from places like Walmart, Sears, etc. They all perform about the same but difference in cost is large. The last time I looked a few years ago I think Walmart had the best rating- I think their paint is made by Glidden.
Go to library and check Consumer Reports. Glidden seems to be best now in exterior paints. Behr is good in interiors. But read the ratings. They are just a month old.
A couple of years ago I was told by WalWart employee and iirc the can backed him up that the paint I bought from Walmart was made by Sherwin- Williams...not that I don't believe they could well be using different vendors or have switched...
That's one thing I have against the generics/rebranded -- often you don't know and don't know that what was rated is what is actually available.
Probably both Glidden and Sherwin-Williams. Probably the lots that they screw and don't want their names on. Or maybe just the lots that they cut corners on to meet the price demands of Walmart.
On Jun 5, 12:57 pm, " snipped-for-privacy@aol.com" wrote: ...
:)
Yeah, I think they've pretty well taken care of that on their own...
That said, I did use Behr on the barn project for reasons too long to go into...it's going on four years and no complaints. Oil-based primer, high gloss white top coat. Looks good and only problems are those spots that didn't get quite the preparation needed. But, on a building 40x66x40-ft ridge height of 90-yr old that hadn't been repainted since sometime I'm guessing in the mid-50s it's inevitable that a few spots are going to get missed. This spring finishing up those spots is one of the jobs hopefully we'll get around to...
I wouldn't use Behr paint if theygave it to me for free. The "Premium" Behr paint they were selling 10 years ago lasted less than a year on my house and garage. It was applied (properly, over their primer) in September, and it was peeling the next Spring. it had a "lifetime" guarantee, so I brought in pictures, they sent someone to the house, huge pain in the ass, but they gave me back the $300 the paint cost. So what? It took me all summer to scrape the crap off the house and prep it to be painted again. Last year, I used California oil base primer and the California flat, which was the Consumer Reports best recommendation in 2006. It's great, looks new, and I think it really will last the 10+ years CR said it should. We'll see.
The "best" Behr of 10 years ago was runny, provided poor coverage, and didn't last 6 months. However, they have obviously made changes in 10 years, so who knows, YMMV? DEFINITELY use an oil base primer under the latex paint, not a latex primer that Home Depot will recommend. It makes a HUGE difference.
HD will not (at least necessarily) recommend latex primer -- from personal experience.
As for Behr, they've been around since shortly after WW II and had an excellent reputation in their market area (mostly west coast) prior to the distribution deal w/ HD which made them much more widely known.
I have looked at the techncial details of their paints as compared to others and they fit right along with any of them.
As noted in a previous response, I used something over 80 gal of it on the barn and can register no complaint against the paint/primer. It sprayed and covered very well and is, imestimation, on a par with anything else of similar price point.
Actually they publish test results after 1 year of testing and label it preliminary. The Glidden Endurance, California brand and a few others are already proven though so why gamble. They consider 1 year torture test = 3 year of equivalent use.
The only thing that bothers me about an oil primer under latex is different rates of expansion might eventually let the latex peel. At least that is what I've read.
If it were so, seems like it would be a _very_ widespread problem with the amount of surface area that has been painted in that fashion over the last 20+ years now...
But that doesn't tell you anything. Lets say you are the dpb bakery and make good pies. You use quality ingredients and lets say it costs you $3 to make a pie.
I am Walmart and I place an order for "Sams Best" pies. I offer you $2.33/pie. Its a big order and not an unusual request for a manufacturer. You choose to accept the order and since you have an efficient process the only way to meet the price point is to use cheaper ingredients. So maybe now your pies have 15% less fruit and more cornstarch and water.
So when someone looks at a pie and says "look these are made by the dpb bakery" does it mean anything?
The point had to do w/ the recommendation of generic-branded products (from CR paint tests in this case). Unless the product manufacturer is given in the test and on the product itself, there's absolutely no way to tell whether the product tested was the one bought -- the distributor could have changed suppliers...
It wasn't claimed the fact that S-W or Glidden happens to be the manufacturer has any bearing (necessarily) on the paint sold by a large retailer under their house or other generic brand label on what the same manufacturer might be selling under their own label.
Don't read more into a post than is written...
Not true!! Advertising and other elements are a part of the cost of production. If dpb bakery is producing and selling pies under their own label, the $3.00 per pie cost includes the costs of advertising, customer service, distribution, etc. for that product. When they produce a pie for Walmart they don't have to include those cost elements, so their total costs to produce the identical pie are less when it's a generic than when it's their branded item.
That doesn't guarantee that what they produce is the identical product, because the retailer will specify what the product should be, and it may not have the same specifications as the producer's branded item.
The point is, when a producer makes a generic product, its costs of production will always be lower than an identical branded item because some of the production costs are eliminated along with the brand name.
That's why items with a rigid specification (e.g., aspirin) can be produced for lower cost as generics than when they carry a brand. -- even though the products are identical, come from the same manufacturer and probably even from the same production line.
You get from $3.00 to $2.33 by cost reduction, and the first costs you can delete are those connected with the $3.00 item that don't apply to the $2.33 item -- marketing, distribution, etc., You may not have the option of using cheaper ingredients, because Wal-Mart is going to give you detailed specifications for the product they want. So "Sam's Best" pies will be produced at lower cost than dpb's pies, even if they're identical in specifications -- even if you can't tell one from the other until you see which box they're put in.
[snip]
My point is, the actual cost includes everything necessary to get the product to market. Two identical pies on an assembly line will have different costs bases depending upon which box they go into. This may seem esoteric but it's not -- but it's hard to come to grips with the fact that two physically identical pies can be on a shelf, but the break-even point for one is $2.33 and for the other is $3.00. There's more to production costs than the cost of ingredients, utility charges, production manpower, etc. It's not an additional cost layer, it's an inherent part of the manufacturing process. That's why the cost of producing a generic item is less than the cost of an identical brand-name item -- frequently significantly so. A real world example, there are "Roper" brand refrigerators that are identical to lower-end Whirlpool brand refrigerators, but are less expensive to produce because they don't carry the additional costs of the Whirlpool name, (and also need to be sold at a lower price to be competitive in the marketplace).
Actually, in the real world, it is most likely that both dpb's pies and "Sam's Best" pies are produced by another company to the specifications given to them by the contracted company. Example -- (1) any of the multitude of pet foods involved in the recent recalls, which had a variety of brand names but were all produced in the same factory. (2) Chevys and Toyotas coming off the same NUMMI production line in California.
This isn't new -- I can remember as a kid, seeing the Kaiser-Frazer vehicle production line, and you didn't know whether the car you were watching was a Kaiser or a Frazer until they put the name plate on as the final pruduction step. The costs were identical up to that point, but after deciding which nameplate went on the vehicle the production costs for each became siginificantly different.
Lots of people do complain of peeling paint even though they claim prep was right. Who knows what caused it. It could very well be a mismatched primer.
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