Encapsulating Lead Paint
Cole Stanton from Fiberlock joins Bob to talk about Child Guard, his company's encapsulating coating for lead-based paint. Lead encapsulating is an alternative to stripping lead-based paint. It's a safer option to removal as it doesn't generate the same volume of lead dust and it's far less expensive. It comes in gloss, or satin or an eggshell that's flat. To prepare the surface of the window trim, Cole has taken a few of the lead-safe wipes and removed a lot of dust from the trim. The wipes are presoaked in TSP (Tri-Sodium Phosphate), a heavy-duty cleaner, which is good at solubilizing and lifting lead dust. Because the coating of Child Guard should be applied at 7/1000s of an inch thick dry, it should easily hide nicks and bruises in the woodwork. It is easy to measure the thickness of a coat of paint while it's wet using a wet film thickness gauge. Measuring is important because the encapsulants are tested and certified to meet the requirements for making lead paint safe in all fifty states but only at a certain thickness. Child Guard is a Thermoplastic Elastomeric Copolymer. It's water-based and cleans off with soap and water. To use the gauge, Cole puts it into the still wet coating and then removes it checking that there is a little dab of coating on the proper tooth. Lastly he applies a second coat to get it to its final thickness. One big problem with lead paint is that it tastes sweet and little kids sometimes go up to a window sill and mouth it. To discourage this, Child Guard has an anti-ingestant called Bitrix in it, which tastes horrible.
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