Yalova exterior painting for owners who live abroad

Yalova faces open water, and the damage on its facades follows the weather rather than the age of the paint. Rain arriving at an angle wets the upper parts of the north and west faces that a vertical shower would never reach, so failure often starts high up and works down. On seafront buildings in Çınarcık and Armutlu the air itself carries salt, which travels into the pores of a render and crystallises there as the wall dries, pushing the coating off the surface from behind.

Three other patterns come up on almost every facade survey here. A green or grey biological film on the shaded north wall, which is growth rather than dirt and comes back quickly if it is painted over instead of washed off. Hairline cracks that widen each winter as water sitting in them freezes and expands. And white salt bloom appearing through the coating, usually in a band above the plinth or under a window sill where water collects and then evaporates through the wall.

The practical point for an owner abroad is that photographs taken from the pavement in August will not show most of this. It is visible on a close inspection from the scaffold or from the roof edge, and a survey report that does not include those close images is not telling you what condition the facade is in.

The survey comes first and it produces documents rather than a verbal opinion. We photograph each face of the building, log where the cracks and the failing areas are, and note the existing coating type, because a silicate coating and an acrylic coating do not take the same repair. You receive that set of photographs before you receive a price, so the quote can be read against evidence.

The written quote names the coating and the number of coats, separates labour from materials, states what access will be used, and sets out the payment stages. Approval happens in writing. Colour is approved from a sample panel painted on your own wall and photographed in daylight, not from a colour code on a screen, because a facade colour reads differently in Yalova light than in a catalogue.

During the work you receive a report at the end of each stage: after washing, after repairs, after priming, after each topcoat, and after the access is struck and the ground cleaned. If you disagree with something in a report, you are seeing it while the scaffold is still up and the correction is still cheap.

In a Turkish apartment block the facade is common property, so painting it is a decision of the owners together and not of one flat owner acting alone. That decision is taken at an owners meeting and recorded in writing. An owner who is abroad can be represented by proxy, and many absentee owners give a standing proxy to a relative or to their letting agent precisely so that they are not outvoted in their absence.

Before you agree to pay a share, ask the building management for four things in writing: the minutes of the meeting that approved the work, the itemised quote the management accepted, how your share was calculated, and the payment schedule. Ask also which article of the Condominium Law the management relied on for the majority it used, because the required majority depends on how the work is classified and it is the management, not the contractor, who has to answer that. This page is not legal advice.

Where the facade is genuinely yours alone, a detached house, a villa, a ground floor unit with its own street elevation, the decision is yours and the process is simply the survey, quote, approval and supervision sequence. We tell you plainly at survey which of the two situations your property is in, because it changes who we take instructions from.

Facade coatings are applied against the weather, not against the calendar, so the quote should name a window rather than a single day. April to June and September to October are the periods in Yalova that reliably give a run of dry, moderate days. Midwinter is ruled out on most facades because the wall does not dry between showers, and most facade coatings state a minimum surface temperature of around five degrees and require a dry substrate.

High summer has the opposite problem. A south or west facing wall in July or August can be too hot by the middle of the day, and a coat applied onto a hot wall skins over before it has flowed out, which shows up later as roller marks and poor adhesion. On those facades the work moves to the early morning and follows the shade around the building, which is slower and has to be planned into the schedule rather than discovered on site.

Rain within the first hours after application is the one risk that cannot be repaired cheaply, because the coating washes or streaks and the face has to be redone. That is why we agree a window with a buffer in it and tell you when we have moved a day, rather than working through a forecast to keep to a promised date.

Most blocks in Yalova are worked from a tube scaffold erected against the facade, which is the steadiest platform for washing and repair work and lets the crew keep a wet edge across a whole face. Where a scaffold cannot stand, on a narrow side elevation, over a garden, above a shop canopy, rope access or a suspended platform is used instead, and the quote says which one your building needs because it changes both the cost and the number of days.

Where the scaffold has to stand on a public pavement or take a parking space, permission from the municipality is normally required and the building or the contractor has to apply for it. Ask for this to be confirmed in the quote rather than assumed. A job stopped halfway because the pavement permit was not in place is an expensive way to learn that it was needed.

Two practical points for an absentee owner. A scaffold in front of your windows for a week or two means your flat should be closed and, if it is let, the guests informed. And a scaffold is an access route, so the flat being empty is a reason to ask your keyholder to check the windows and balcony doors are locked before the work begins.

Almost everything that decides whether a facade job lasts is invisible in the finished result. Whether the wall was actually washed. Whether a crack was opened and filled or simply painted across. Whether the primer went on the repaired areas. Whether two coats were applied or one thick one. A photograph of a clean looking wall taken from a flattering angle proves none of it.

So the report is built to be compared rather than admired. Each face of the building is photographed from a marked position on the ground, and every later photograph of that face is taken from the same spot, so the images stack and a defect cannot disappear because the camera moved. Close range photographs of every repair are taken before the repair is covered, which is the only moment they can be taken at all.

Keep that photo set after the job finishes. If a coating fails in the third winter, the argument about whether it was a materials problem or a preparation problem is settled by images of the wall before it was covered, and an owner who lives abroad has no other way to hold that evidence.

Where the facade is yours, payment is normally a bank transfer from your account to a Turkish business account against an invoice, split into stages that follow the photo report so that each release covers work you have already seen. The stages and the currency are written into the quote before the work begins. A relative or agent in Yalova can pay on your behalf if you authorise them in writing.

Where the facade belongs to the block, the money usually moves through the building management rather than to us directly, and your obligation is your share as the management calculates it. Ask for a receipt from the management for what you pay and keep it with the meeting minutes, because a share paid in cash to an individual with no paperwork is difficult to prove from another country.

On international transfers, agree in advance who carries the intermediary bank charges. A transfer that arrives short of the invoice is a routine event, and it is better settled in the quote than in the final week of the job.