Insulated Paint?

[Matt]

Anyone have any experience with this stuff:

Does it work? If so how well? What kind of R value do you get out of it?

~ Matt

[Travis Jordan]

According to some posters, it is great stuff. R19, at least.

OTOH, there are the facts.

[SQLit]

Last summer before painting my home I sent emails and called them for a client list that could be contacted. I had a thermal scan done on my home. I was ready for a before and after product review. I got lots of claims but not one customer that I could contact. No worries the scan was done by a friend on the weekend. He has one in his company van.

My basic premise is if 20-40 mils of paint could insulate, then why is the government not demanding that it be used in every new building? Why are not the utility companies offering rebates for people to use the product. Like they do for energy efficient products. Sure would be cheaper than building new power plants.

Call your local utility folks and see what they say.

[HVAC fella]

I have some of that . Will be trying it out in April when it warms up a bit more here in Illinois.

[Scott Packard]

I used some of their stuff, for two different applications.

1) They sell a rust sealer primer, a liquid grey paint with some of their spheres mixed in.

2) A bag of spheres, shipped dry, and added to the paint on site.

The application was some metal security bars and a stair rail on the outside of a house. I was motivated to find a better way to work around the rust/old paint problem because it took me about three weekends to scrape, de-rust, black oxide, prime, and top coat one bar set and I didn't want/have time for that for every bar set (and I couldn't remove the stair rail).

I took two security bar sets to a pro to have them sandblasted, hot-melt primered and hot-melt finish coated. (hot-melt == powder- coat)

The stair rail I treated as if the product was really going to work, so I did very minimal prep, no black oxide treatment. I slapped on their primer (containing spheres), (one coat only, but they recommend two) followed by one top coat which I mixed with some dry spheres.

Then we had the January and February rains, which brought us to the third wettest season on record.

The bars I hand-treated with all the prep, prime, and coat faired okay. There is some rust showing up on them again (and since I used rust treatment *and* primer gray I don't see how it could!).

The pro-treated bars finish looked the best, but plenty of rust is showing through the surface now. I'm disappointed.

The stair rail is holding back the rust the best. I think I can see a little brown-like coloring happening to the otherwise white topcoat, but I can't see the obvious rust coming up yet. The finish is the least-professional of the three, as the spheres look like I dumped some beach sand into the paint. I don't care too much. I'm saying to myself, "Well, in an emergency my hand will grip well to that handrail."

So, to recap: Their paint-onto-rust primer seems to work well, provided you can tolerate a sand-like finish. It may look expensive at first, but the labor it saves more than pays for itself. I give it a thumbs-up.

I never believed that a thin layer of paint could ever provide a high R-value, so I didn't buy the product for that purpose.

The dry spheres are easy to ship but kind of pointless to buy if you're looking for their special primer. I guess I give them a Miss Cleo rating. Use them if it makes you feel good.

Regards, Scott