A painting plan built on the station's own numbers
NOAA keeps an engineering weather record for Tuscaloosa, and a few of its figures say something useful about paint. None of them tells you what next Tuesday will bring. Read together, they point to where a paint job is most likely to struggle: in the time coats take to dry, at the joints where rain gets behind the finish, and on surfaces that freeze and thaw.
Drying time and the wet-bulb hours
In an average year at Tuscaloosa, NOAA counts about 1,508 hours with the wet-bulb temperature above 73°F and about 3,008 hours above 67°F. Wet-bulb temperature rises when air is both warm and carrying moisture. Under those conditions water leaves a fresh coat of latex slowly, so the recoat time printed on the can is a minimum, not a promise.
What that can change on the job:
- A crew may paint fewer surfaces per day, so each one firms up before the next coat or before evening.
- Shaded walls and the undersides of eaves dry last, and a careful painter works them early.
- Two coats on the same day may not be realistic. Ask how the schedule allows for that.
Hard rain and the joints that let it in
NOAA's engineering weather data for Tuscaloosa lists a 100-year rainfall rate of 4.0 inches per hour. Engineers use a figure like that to size drainage for a severe storm. For paint, the message is that when rain comes hard, it finds every open seam. Water that gets behind paint at a window head, a corner board or the lap of a siding course loosens the film from behind, and the damage shows up later as blistering or peeling.
So the parts of an exterior bid to read most closely are the ones about sealing:
- Is failed caulk cut out and replaced, or only covered over?
- Are window and door heads checked for gaps above the trim?
- Is the bottom edge of each siding board painted, where water tends to wick in?
- Are any gutters overflowing onto a wall? That needs fixing before the wall is painted.
Freeze-thaw cycles and wind
The same NOAA data lists about 37 freeze-thaw cycles in an average year and a 50-year basic wind speed of 90 mph (3-second gust at 33 feet). Each freeze-thaw cycle gives water trapped in a crack a chance to freeze, expand and open the crack a little wider. Hairline cracks in old paint on handrails, porch floors and window sills are the usual starting points, so those surfaces deserve scraping and priming, not just a fresh topcoat. The wind figure is a structural design value; for painting, gusty days mostly affect spraying, which can drift, and work from tall ladders.
Inside the house
Interior jobs are less tied to the weather, but not free of it. With windows open on a damp day, paint dries slower and the smell lingers. With the air conditioning running, rooms are drier and paint tends to behave more predictably. Ask the painter whether they want the system on while they work. For walls with cracks or old patches, our guide to drywall repair and surface preparation explains what good prep looks like before the first coat.
Where to put the money
If the budget is tight, spend it on the parts that keep water out and paint on: washing, scraping, caulking and priming bare spots. A premium topcoat over poor preparation won't last as long as a sound mid-grade product over careful prep. Our pricing guide explains how proposals are built, and the exterior painting page walks through the steps in order.
Before you agree to a start date
- Ask how many working days the painter expects, and how a rainy stretch is handled.
- Ask which surfaces get two coats and which get one.
- Ask whether spraying is planned, and how windows, cars and plants will be protected from drift.
- Ask what the crew does at the end of each day to protect work that hasn't dried.