PAINT LIQUIDS:
In a can of paint, the vehicle and the largest volume of any ingredient in the formulation is water. Paints contain a percentage of other liquids or agents such as acrylic, latex, or urethane that act as binders to glue the solids to the wall, giving it a lightweight protective sheen, but often under utilizing the agent. 

PAINT SOLIDS:
The majority of the solid material in paint is calcium carbonate, or chalk, and is literally the same material used in classrooms on chalk boards.  It is an inexpensive filler that is easily colored with pigments.

PAINT PERFORMANCE:
So paint is essentially a slurry of chalk, water and glue, with a little color that is spread in paper thin coats, literally drying to one half the thickness of a page in the telephone directory.  When the protective sheen erodes in one to two years, the chalk is exposed and begins to deteriorate rapidly.  The paint appears to fade, which is most likely not a pigment failure, but the chalk coming through with sunlight bleaching out the pigment. 

SYSTEMIC PROBLEMS WITH PAINT:
There are two significant problems with paint. The exterior of a home is in constant motion either due to wind and temperature variations. (Not to discount movement from a basketball or a branch hitting the home or simply leaning against the wall to tie your shoes)  Some glue formulations are better at flexing than others, but when they "cure" or harden, they become brittle and fracture.  This hardening usually takes about one year.

The second problem is moisture. If there is moisture in the air, it will easily migrate to both the exterior and interior sides of the wall.  If it is raining, the coating should stop the rain.  A fractured paint will let moisture in and cause it to damage the substrate.  Water in the air cavity of the wall will move by convection in the wall and condense when the air reaches the dew point temperature.  Water will condense on the inside surface, which is absorbed in to the porous wall and move along with heat, as a result of thermal transfer, to the exterior. 

Paints do not release moisture.  Most have a perm rating of six or less (as confirmed in a survey we conducted of each major paint manufacturer - however, not all manufacturers even measure perm rating for their exterior paints-more on perm ratings later)  Without permeability, the water puts a tremendous amount of pressure against the underside of the paint, causing it to bubble while flexible, or crack after the paint binder becomes rigid.

LIQUID CERAMIC^®  - A COATING:
Liquid Ceramic  is a coating.  A coating differs from a paint in that the vehicle is intended to do more than spread solids across the surface and then evaporate and the solids are selected to contribute to very specific performance criteria. 

Acrylics coalesce, or simply melt together to form a uniform film.  If applied in thin coats, typically a mil or two in thickness as in a paint application, even acrylic will have limited structural integrity.  Liquid Ceramic is applied in layers resulting in a finish coating of 10 mils thick or better. (about the thickness of the phone book cover)

Other ingredients in the vehicle allow the acrylic to release moisture at a certain rate, called the Rate of Permeability. This is one of Liquid Ceramic's major assets.  If moisture can be released, then the damage to the substrate will be minimized or even eliminated over very long periods of time.

Since the acrylic is not intelligent, it will not "know" if it is releasing the bad moisture from beneath the coating or stopping rain from coming in the other side.  The thickness of the coating serves several purposes, one is that it creates a hydroscopic barrier.  The thicker the coating, the harder it is to push water through.  As tests have shown, a Hurricane force wind can go through one coat in 30 minutes.  Place two coats and water will not penetrate in 24 hours.

The thickness also serves to create enough strength to bridge gaps in the exterior materials of the home and not break.  Liquid Ceramic stretches 160% of its length and returns to 100% without fracturing, and it will do this indefinitely.

Flexibility is another characteristic of a coating but adding ingredients to the formulation that result in a highly elastic coating will also result in one that has little or no perm rating.  All the ingredients have to work together.

THE SOLIDS IN LIQUID CERAMIC:
Mostly ceramic microspheres and titanium dioxide, the solids have an extremely long useful life, and since they are not chalk, will not contribite to degradation of the coating.

BENEFITS OF LIQUID CERAMIC:

Liquid Ceramic is probably the best coating on the market today for the exterior of any building.  It is a high performance coating with a no-compromise formulation and a consistent manufacturing process that is identical to the product developers original standards.