Prep 30yo aluminum siding for paint?

[Able Hands 14]

Hey all

My parents home outside of Binghamton, NY is +/-30 years old. To my knowledge it has only been pressure washed, incorrectly for sure, once or twice in the years they have been there. The coating on the siding is all but gone.

My dad made some noise when I was up this past summer about painting it, hinting that I could do it on one of my visits. I have done a bunch of painting over the years, but never aluminum siding.

Does anyone here have any experience prepping for this type of work. I'll do some leg work in the painting forums as well about the actual finish application, but are there any techniques/chemicals to get the majority of the chalking off? Don't have any pics but this once beautiful house is really a mess.

Any help is appreciated

Matt

[Celeste 341]

Matt, the gentleman that we got our equipment from actually stained his aluminum siding....It looks great! If you're interested in other options, I'll be glad to ring him up to see exactly what he did :)

Celeste

[PowerPlay 14]

I have done this type of work a few times with excellent results. The product I use is actually cleaner that I use for cleaning fiberglass on RVs (removing those pesky black streaks). We have a lot of campgrounds in our area.

The product is a strong butyl based cleaner. So anything like the Gutter Shock or the other one I forget what it is would probably work at high concentrations.

Apply, let dwell, and power wash all that chalky and failed paint away.

I don't know if this is the perfect item to use, maybe others can give you a different approach. But this has worked very well for me twice now!

[Able Hands 14]

Celeste,

That would be great. If you want you could just forward his contact info to me. I don't want to take up your time asking questions I can ask myself.

Thanks for you help.

If there are any other ideas or experts out there, I'd love to hear from you.

Matt

PS - Would someone kindly define "avatar"? It appears to be the picture your using along side your name at the top of posts.

[Kevin Lowe 14]

I used tide cold water mixed with simple green and it worked great. Took the chalking right off. Used a good primer and paint and everything turned out great.

[PressurePros 248]

TSP and sodium metasilicate.