Exterior paint - over lime render

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Nige

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The exterior of my house badly needs to be repainted. It is an old house (about 150 years old) and has lime render. The existing paint is peeling badly (painted by previous owners).

Is a normal water based paint (eg Dulux Weathershield) suitable or do I need to get a more "breatheable" paint?
 
I wouldn't recommend using standard Emulsion like "Weathershield". That's probably why the coating from the previous owners is peeling badly. I have a similar situation here, recoated with the aforementioned and it peeled again after a year!

The wall needs to breathe more as you reach the external face to allow moisture to evaporate rather than be trapped causing the peeling or in a worse case (as mine over the last cold snap) cause the the render to fall away with freeze thaw.

There are plenty of natural breathable paints like St. Astier and Beeck. To lime wash you would have to completely remove the previous coat.

A coat of bonding sealant would make the paint last longer but could have disastrous affects on your wall, possibly leading to moisture being trapped internally leading to damp and mould etc.

I'm looking into other possible remedies myself as it happens so we'll see if there are any more suggestions here.
 
thanks so much db40, I suspected as much but couldn't find anything definitive on google! The previous owners didn't seem to have much consideration for the age of the property. I'll check out St Astier and Beeck.

let me know how you get on with your lime render issues.
 
Further information regarding mineral paints

Have you sourced your paint yet? I'm surprised at the lack of sources for our painting situation in Ireland. Most placed are recommending a sealant and paint which didn't work in my case and is technically the wrong approach. Besides the Traditional Lime Company there isn't much of a range of stockists here, some builders' providers stock a limited selection of lime paints. I've found a product Sandtex Integrasil - a more versatile mineral paint that can adhere to previous coated surfaces - but it's only available in the UK. I rang a Crown stockist in Belfast and they can order it in, which I might do if I know anyone making the trip there soon.
 
no db40, I haven't. Google wasn't coming up with much by way of stockists and The Traditional Lime Company seem to have ignored my email. I haven't had a chance to ring them (I'm not too far from them so collecting the paint would be an option for me).
 
Farrow & Ball do a limewash and have a shop in Dublin on Cornmarket:
[broken link removed]
 
The Traditional Lime Company got back to me and confirmed that there is no much point in putting a lime or mineral paint over the existing acrylic paint as it won't adhere. They did refer to me the Beeck Restoration paint which will adhere to the old paint but the issue of trapped moisture under the old paint would still be there.

The best option is to strip the paint and then apply a limewash (for example St. Astier Limepaint or prepared from a limeputty) or a breathable mineral paint such as Beeckosil.

I'm not sure what I'll do. I am planning on putting the house on the market so taking on a lot of extra work probably isn't the best financial idea but I am loathe to do something that I know is wrong for the building.
 
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