On Wednesday, 1 August 2018 07:49:12 UTC+1, Brian Gaff wrote:
"Clive Page" wrote in message
...
Our house has 3 windows facing roughly south. All of them have paint
flaking off the exterior window ledges although the window frames are
otherwise sound. I remember painting all of them only 3 years ago, so
they haven't lasted as long as I had hoped. The problem is clearly that
wooden window ledges expand and contract and even crack in the Sun, made
worse by our recent heatwave.

I see that one can get "flexible" paint, e.g. Johnstone's "flexible gloss"
and others similar such as Ronseal "10 year external wood paint". They
are obviously more expensive but might be worth it to avoid the effort of
repainting every couple of years. Does anyone have experience of these -
are they worth the money for timber surfaces in full sunlight?

Well, I'm not convinced I had some window sills done witha so called
flexible gloss and they are still cracking up, Mind you it was black paint
and hence probably got hot.
I'm thinking maybe there is more to it than just expansion though.
Brian

all alkyd gloss is flexible. That's primarily why it's used on exterior wood.


NT