Hun-Yue Wong wrote:
At the end of September, we repainted our house which was newly
constructed 9 1/2 years ago. We are in Northern California in the Bay
Area. The weather when it was painted was sunny but cool and dry. We
used Benjamin Moore Low Lustre acrylic Paint for the wood siding and
the Benjamin Moore Semi Gloss acrylic for the trim. The painter power
washed the house and waited about 1 day to dry before painting.

A little over a week after the painting was completed, there was a
big storm and the rains came down quite hard for the whole day. The
next morning, we saw thousands of bubbles clustered around the lower
part of the window trims (especially the sills), on the recaulked
seams, bases of our columns and doors. Bubbles also appeared at the
seams of the sidings and edges of windows that were recaulked and
painted over. The next day after the rains dissipated, the bubbles
disappeared except for a few spots.

Here are pictures of some of the problem areas at
http://picasaweb.google.com/sheepgirl888/PaintProblem#
Most of these pictures were taken when the bubbles first appeared.
Pictures of a column with a quarter taped to the column was taken
after we tried to recreate the problem.

I am asking the painter to come back to look at the problem. The
weather has been nice and dry since. We have tried to recreate the
bubbling by running water over the multiple problem areas for at least
15-20 minutes, but can only recreate the bubbles in a smaller size on
the columns. Is there another way to recreate this scenario so that we
can show the painter what happened?

My questions a
1. What would have caused that? Inappropriate preparation before
the painting?
2. Somebody suggested that because it usually takes a few weeks
for the paint to completely dry, that bubbling occurred because the
paint job had only a week to dry? Is this true?
3. Under the bubbles which formed and now have dried out, is there
still moisture trapped in there. Will this keep reoccuring with every
rain? And if it does, will this eventually cause damage to the wood
trim and siding?
4. What should we ask the painter to do to fix the problem
correctly and prevent future problems?

Thanks in advance for all of your suggestions.

K

The issue was just discussed in detail under subject "Bubble on stucco
wall after raining", dated 10/13.

"About one day" is not long enough to wait between pressure washing and
painting. Since you experienced problems immediately after the storm,
it certainly suggests that the bubbles are storm related. Call your
insurance company - don't tell them the painter goofed. Read the other
posts for details of the discussion.

The link below is to the website for your product. You can contact Ben
Moore, too:
http://benjaminmoore.com/bmpsweb/por... _findproducts