APV Offers Industry-Exclusive 15-Year Paint-and-Labor Guarantee
Faced with the prospect of having to repaint a relatively new, but severely faded building three times over a 15-year period, facility management at Solano Community College decided to try a different approach: take advantage of a 15-year paint-and-labor warranty on NeverFade® paint from APV Engineered Coatings. The result? Savings of more than $48,000.
Solano Community College’s Vallejo Center campus is located on the San Pablo Bay, northeast of San Francisco, an area known for ocean-driven fog, wind and moisture, coupled with sunny, hot and windy afternoons. The weather conditions caused the building’s exterior —originally painted with a premium acrylic latex paint — to fade from a bright, “Solano Safety Blue” to a tired, battleship grey in just five years. Even a light touch of the walls left a chalky residue on the hands.
“The building’s curb appeal was lackluster, to put it mildly, and we started to get complaints from students, community members and our board of trustees,” said James Buchanan, director of facilities for Solano Community College. “We didn’t relish the thought — or the expense — of having to repaint the building every five years. When we learned about the 15-year guarantee on NeverFade®, it was an easy choice.”
NeverFade® is a water-based, low-VOC exterior coating. It contains Kynar Aquatec® resin, a tough, engineering thermoplastic that does not degrade when exposed to harsh ultraviolet, thermal and chemical pollution environments. It resists fading, chalking, dirt, staining, algae, mold, and fungal growth and helps protect substrates from corrosion in marine environments.
“We are so confident in the performance of NeverFade® that we offer a 15-year warranty against fading,” says Erin Brown, director of Marketing and Business Development, APV Engineered Coatings, who notes that the company custom-blends each batch of NeverFade to match the customer’s color specifications. “This warranty is unique because it doesn’t just cover the cost of the product. It also covers labor costs.”
For Solano Community College’s Vallejo Center, those costs were estimated to be $16,000-$18,000 per paint job — a significant expense if the building needed to be repainted every five years. Not included in that expense are the “soft costs” associated with the building’s appearance.
“We want to make our campus attractive to students and the community so it’s a good learning environment and a place people want to be,” Buchanan says. “Now, thanks to the NeverFade® paint job, the Vallejo Center looks fabulous. Everyone is impressed with the striking color.”
Before: The Vallejo Center was built in 2007, but began to fade in 2012. This is what it looked like just prior to being repainted in the summer of 2016.
About Solano Community College
Solano College is part of California’s public community college system of 113 campuses in 72 districts across the state. The College’s service area encompasses the communities of Benicia, Dixon, Fairfield, Suisun, Vacaville, Vallejo and Winters, as well as Travis Air Force Base. Many graduates of the area’s fifteen public high schools and three private schools take advantage of the educational opportunities offered by Solano Community College. With the current student population of 11,000 almost evenly divided between day and evening, the Solano College campus is alive at all hours offering academic study and occupational training to area residents.
About APV Engineered Coatings
Founded in 1878, APV Engineered Coatings custom formulates and manufactures industrial coatings and advanced chemical products in Akron, Ohio. APV is a partner for some of the world’s top-producing manufacturers due to its expertise in chemical and coating composition, the commercialization of advanced materials and large-scale production. The company’s innovative solutions have been integrated into a variety of industries for unique applications. A licensee of Arkema Inc. in the use of Kynar® emulsion technology, APV has been developing and commercializing high-performance Kynar® resin-based coatings for field and factory applications for more than a decade. For more information, call 800-772-3452 or visit www.apvcoatings.com or www.neverfadecoatings.com.
Kynar® and Kynar Aquatec® are registered trademarks of Arkema Inc.
