Story at a glance:
- A facade restoration project at The Carlyle in San Antonio involved refinishing the factory-coated aluminum trim on 1,000 windows, 140 sets of sliding doors, and 500 balcony panels.
- Coating systems formulated with PVDF resin technology deliver long-term colorfast performance other coatings can’t.
After two decades of ad-hoc repairs to fix leaks at a San Antonio condominium building, the condo association’s trusted restoration services company undertook a full facade refresh to both eliminate the potential for future leaks and provide a much-needed facelift to the aging property.
The Carlyle stands as a prominent fixture in San Antonio’s Alamo Heights neighborhood. Completed in 1985, the 12-story high-rise features 74 units with expansive views of the surrounding area. Residences range from about 1,500 square feet to more than 3,000 square feet, with higher-end units priced near $2 million.
Floor-to-ceiling windows are one of The Carlyle’s hallmarks, and many units include private balconies.
Small Repairs Became Ineffective
Starting in 2000, The Carlyle began turning to Surmac, Inc. to fix a series of leaks in the brick facade and around the units’ metal-trimmed window and sliding door frames. Surmac, Inc. is a nationwide building rehabilitation and restoration company providing services like waterproofing, pressure washing, reclaim cleaning, specialty coatings, masonry and concrete repair, concrete grinding and polishing, specialty commercial and industrial floor installation and repair, parking garage and deck repair, and commercial roofing.
The company routinely performs exterior restoration work on historic, high-profile, and otherwise noteworthy buildings and is often called upon for projects requiring major work without interruption in business or inconvenience to building owners, tenants, or guests. Clients have included Alamo Stadium in San Antonio; the El Paso, Texas Airport; Federal Reserve Building in San Antonio; Hill Air Force Base in Ogden, Utah; Texas A&M University; and more.
Company founder and president Rick Watson has been in the specialty contracting business since 1973 and as a “hands-on” executive, can usually be found on the job site. “Last year The Carlyle approached us for another series of leak repairs,” Watson says. “We advised the owners that, due to the age of the building, these frequent, small repairs were becoming ineffective.”
Watson convinced the owners that this latest round of repair requests provided a perfect opportunity to both address leaks and refresh the property’s appearance with long-lasting finishes.
Long-Term Protection for Metal Trim Elements
The building’s aluminum trim elements had a lackluster appearance after decades of weathering, as seen here in this before photo. Photo courtesy of Surmac Inc.
Part of the facade restoration project involved refinishing the factory-coated aluminum trim on 1,000 windows, 140 sets of sliding doors, and 500 balcony panels – over 20,000 linear square feet of surface area. The original anodized metal had oxidized severely over the decades, leading to a lackluster appearance with brownish-red spots marring the surface.
“The building owners were not aware that the weather-worn metal work could be rejuvenated,” Watson says. “We knew based on previous experience with some higher-end projects that it could, by using NeverFade® Exterior Paints from APV Engineered Coatings.”
NeverFade Exterior Paints formulated with Kynar Aquatec® PVDF (polyvinylidene fluoride) resin provide a field-applied finish for metal panels that is extremely close to factory-applied finishes.
NeverFade is specially designed for this type of metal trim restoration. It was the only paint we considered for this project.
Kynar Aquatec PVDF resin is a tough, engineered thermoplastic polymer that promotes excellent weatherability, color retention, and abrasion resistance thanks to carbon-fluorine bonds that do not break down under exposure to the elements. It has extreme weatherability like that of Kynar 500® PVDF resin-based coatings, which have been used in factory finishes on exterior building materials for six decades. Side-by-side southern Florida weathering tests of Kynar 500 and Kynar Aquatec® based coatings over the past 23 years show similarly superlative performance with respect to color fade and chalking.
“In subtropical climates like San Antonio, buildings are regularly exposed to harsh UV rays, high heat, and humidity, which can cause building exteriors to fade,” says Ernie Porco, product application engineer at APV Engineered Coatings. “Even high-performance paints can quickly chalk, fade, and degrade. However, coating systems formulated with PVDF resin technology deliver long-term colorfast performance other coatings can’t.”
Kynar Aquatec PVDF resin helps NeverFade Exterior Paints resist extreme UV rays, high temperature, humidity, and abrasion from salt spray, sand, and other windblown particles. It also hinders mold, mildew, and dirt pickup for more than 20 years—a much longer lifespan than the five-year life cycle typically seen with high-performance urethanes and acrylic latex paints used in warm-weather climates. In environments like those, traditional high-performance paints break down under UV exposure, eroding over time and eventually leaving the metal substrate bare and open to damage from the elements.
“NeverFade is specially designed for this type of metal trim restoration,” Watson says. “It was the only paint we considered for this project. The pigments in other high-end coatings just don’t hold up to the high UV conditions in San Antonio.”
Project Team Completes Work in Record Time
After the facade refresh. Photo courtesy of Surmac Inc.
At the beginning of the restoration project, APV’s Porco visited the project site to inspect conditions and advise Watson’s crew on proper surface preparation and cleaning prior to application of the paint system. He also conducted adhesion tests to confirm the integrity of the bonds between substrate, primer and topcoat and joined Watson for a homeowner’s meeting to address any resident questions about NeverFade.
“Working with Ernie and the APV team was a pleasure,” Watson says. “We had a good comfort level with the company and its product and that translated to the homeowners as well.”
Watson’s 14-person crew chemically cleaned all metal surfaces to remove the oxidation, then hand-abraded all the trim. They also removed degraded sealing material—original to the 1980s building and the source of many leaks—from around all the doors and windows, installed new backer rods, and resealed them to eliminate leaks and reduce energy loss.
Once the metal surfaces were clean and re-sealed, the crew used special, high-quality brushes to apply one coat of APV W-1650 Bonding Primer followed by two coats of NeverFade Metal Restoration Topcoat, custom formulated to match the metal’s original goldish-bronze hue. Because of the intense summer heat, the crew “followed the sun,” always painting on the shady side of the building as the sun moved throughout the day.
“NeverFade was easy to apply, and the finish was fantastic,” Watson says. “The high-end brushes we used helped to create a smooth finish without any brush strokes and allowed us to avoid time-consuming masking. I would definitely use NeverFade again for any metal surface work where the customer expects long-term performance.”
The facade restoration project also involved repairs to the building’s brick walls—another source of leaks. The Surmac crew pinned loose bricks back into the wall using stainless steel helical pins and repaired cracks with carbon fiber stitches. They used a sophisticated and long-lasting hybrid polymer caulk to repair degraded mortar and coated the bricks with a waterproof, sun-reflective coating designed to lower the building’s heat load.
Even with the extensive nature of the work, Watson’s crew completed the project in just under three months—less than half the time estimated.
“Your team not only met but exceeded our expectations, completing the project on time and within budget,” says Rick Forsyth, president of The Carlyle HOA, in a letter to Watson. “Their professionalism and respect for our residents were exemplary, earning numerous compliments from our community. In our experience with other contractors, Surmac stands out for its commitment to quality and customer service. Thank you for a job well done.”
