Browse Forums Eco Living 1 Jul 03, 2009 5:46 pm Hi, I have recently been made aware of VOCs emitting from paint and want to try and get low VOC for the interior of my house. The building company I'm going through uses Dulux and they have told me that the Wash and Wear 101 is part of Dulux's Ecochoice range and low VOC, however the undercoat they use is not Ecochoice and has high VOC emissions. The painters won't use any other so I'm stuck with it. Is there any point in having low VOC paint if the undercoat is just going to emit VOCs? Also - while the Dulux CSR told me that gloss for trims and doors has VOCs of 70g/l, semi gloss has less than 5g/l. However my building rep told me that she checked and was informed that gloss and semi-gloss have the same emission rate. Our other option is to get credit for the paint work and get it done ourselves after hand over but our budget is pretty stretched and I'm almost certain we won't be able to afford this option. Your thoughts? Re: Internal paint and VOCs 2Jul 03, 2009 10:59 pm Hi jem there are quite a few very good surface finishes with Very low VOCs to no VOCs How much time do you have before D day? Where you are coming from is where you are going to... Re: Internal paint and VOCs 3Jul 07, 2009 10:51 am Hi, Our tender appt is next Monday. Our builders said they will credit us $7000 for them to do no internal paintwork. But, there is no way that will cover us to get the house painted after handover. And I just realised that our bank won't extend our loan to cover external contractors and will only cover the builder. So, we would have to find the extra $$$ to get the paint job done after handover. This is not looking good...! I would hate to have to settle for environmentally unsound paints just because our builder isn't up to date with the latest products. Re: Internal paint and VOCs 4Jul 07, 2009 11:28 pm Why not print this and take it to the builder. and also tell dulux that their Dulux approved painter refuses to use their product for you? http://www.dulux.com.au/html/specifier/DuluxEnviroSolutions.pdf Re: Internal paint and VOCs 5Jul 07, 2009 11:49 pm We've moved into two brand new houses, one painted with regular Dulux and one painted with some mysterious brand of the painters' choice. The Dulux wasn't too bad, while the other stuff took months to air out, and I've heard similar complaints from other people. I hope that is of some comfort to you if you end up having to go with the regular Dulux undercoat. But I would be asking why the painters don't want to use low VOC undercoat. The Dulux website gives the figures for its various products and states . . . "Please note that the figures below are a guide only, as the actual VOC rating will depend on gloss level selected. All figures exclude tinting." http://www.dulux.com.au/html/secondary/ ... 24bc659896 They sure make it confusing with the name changes. At one time their eco friendly paint was called Berger Breatheasy and now it appears that the best one is called Envir02. (I see that's the one mentioned in Yak Chat's link too.) Re: Internal paint and VOCs 7Jul 08, 2009 3:19 pm I'd still push them to use the best products and if not then explain exactly why not. I just meant if you do your best to no avail, then Dulux should be better than the horrible budget rubbish some painters use. But it really is time we caught up with what they have been doing overseas in various areas, safer healthier paint being just one of them. Re: Internal paint and VOCs 8Jul 09, 2009 12:12 pm Update - The CSR rang me back and said that after consultation with Dulux, they will use the paint that I have specified for an additional $400. However, they want to put a clause in the contract saying that the finish won't look the same as the display house. Also, apparently Dulux said that using the enviro friendly paint will only benefit the painter at the time of the paint job. But I understand that offgassing can last as long as 5 years? What are your thoughts on this? Below are the standard paints the builder uses and the paint that we have requested and can get... Standard: Dulux Professional Acrylic Sealer Undercoat - VOCs are <45 grams per litre Alternative: Dulux Professional Enviro2 Acrylic Sealer Undercoat - <1g/l Standard: Dulux Super Enamel Semi Gloss. - <430 g/l Alternative: Dulux Aqua Enamel Semi Gloss - <74 g/l Cheers Re: Internal paint and VOCs 9Jul 09, 2009 2:34 pm The finish should be fine. Sounds like they are just covering themselves due to their unfamiliarity with the product. I'm not sure exactly how long water based paint outgasses for but it would be noticeable for weeks, in the case of the cheap stuff I mentioned many many weeks. The good news about a new build is that there is still the fitout and everything so by the time you move in the worst of it should be over. The bad news is the whole house has been painted with multiple coats so there's a greater amount of outgassing. My feeling is if I found the perfect house already painted I would let my nose be my guide as to whether to worry about the paint used (we were looking at new houses in the past couple of years and a minority of them smelled quite unpleasant even though they had been completed weeks earlier). If building, I personally would insist on low VOC paint, it's healthier and better for the environment. When painting where we live, we use low VOC paint and the difference is huge! Oil paint has much higher levels of solvents. Another consideration is when repainting it's not a straightforward matter to switch from one to the other, they won't adhere properly to each other, though apparently there are ways of preparing the surface. When my parents had their bathroom repainted they reluctantly agreed to have oil paint again and it was noticeable for months. That was walls, not just trim. Nevertheless I would not use oil paint inside for anything. Btw one thing I've found when making technical enquiries about paint, and for that matter about other things, is that the level of real technical knowledge can vary between customer relations officers. We have sometimes been given quite contradictory information. Re: Internal paint and VOCs 10Jun 22, 2010 2:56 pm We went to the trouble of specifying low VOC paint, but have just gone through our place yesterday and noticed that the painter appears to be spraying something else which, as best I can ascertain so far, is not low VOC. I'm not quite sure what to do if it turns out he is filling our house with chemicals that we don't want (and which I'm sensitive to) Any ideas? Re: Internal paint and VOCs 11Aug 14, 2010 5:24 am xflibble We went to the trouble of specifying low VOC paint, but have just gone through our place yesterday and noticed that the painter appears to be spraying something else which, as best I can ascertain so far, is not low VOC. I'm not quite sure what to do if it turns out he is filling our house with chemicals that we don't want (and which I'm sensitive to) Any ideas? could be because they are spraying you are noticing the smell as the paintis forced into little droplets from the nozzle of the gun if they were to roll the same paint the smell would be far less But they could be using something else I went outside once. The graphics were alright, but the gameplay sucked! Settlement:22nd June Slab:27th August Frame:16th Sept Bricked:21st Oct Roof:24th Nov Linings HANDOVER23rd March! Thank you alexp79 and gommeqld for your advice, that's very helpful, thanks 3 7919 Thanks. Yeh ideally that would have been good, but have progressed too far now. Hoping some well placed internal walls fixed up into the battens will provide some… 2 5401 3 10195 |