What a Strata Painting Warranty Should Actually Cover

Every quote for a strata repaint mentions a warranty, usually as a headline number of years. Very few committees read past that number, and the number on its own tells you almost nothing.

A warranty is only as good as what it covers, what it excludes, and whether the entity offering it will still exist when you need it. For an owners corporation spending a significant portion of the capital works fund, those details matter more than the headline.

Two different warranties are in play

This is the distinction that causes most of the confusion.

The product warranty comes from the paint manufacturer and covers the coating itself — that the paint will perform as specified when applied correctly to a properly prepared surface. It is generally the longer of the two, and it is also the narrower.

The workmanship warranty comes from the contractor and covers the application: preparation, coverage, adhesion and finish. This is the one that actually matters on a strata repaint, because the overwhelming majority of painting failures are preparation failures rather than product failures.

A quote advertising a long warranty is often quoting the manufacturer's product term. Ask specifically what the contractor's own workmanship warranty is, in writing, and for how long.

What a workmanship warranty should cover

At minimum it should cover peeling, flaking, blistering and delamination of the applied coating, loss of adhesion, and premature or uneven fading and chalking beyond what the product specification allows.

It should state clearly whether rectification includes labour, materials and access. On a mid-rise Melbourne building, access is the expensive part — a warranty that covers the paint and the labour but not the swing stage or scaffold required to reach the defect is close to worthless on anything above the second floor.

That access question is the single most important thing a committee should check, and it is the one most often left vague.

The exclusions that matter

Every warranty has exclusions, and the standard ones are reasonable. The point is to know which are in play for your building.

Substrate failure is usually excluded. If render cracks, a balcony leaks or a wall moves, the paint over it will fail, and that is not the painter's doing. This is why remedial repair work before a repaint matters so much, and why a scope that skips it creates a warranty gap rather than a saving.

Existing coatings are commonly excluded where the new paint is applied over old paint that the contractor did not remove. If the specification calls for painting over sound existing coatings — which is normal and sensible — the warranty may not cover failure originating in those older layers.

Moisture and damp are almost always excluded. On a building with a known water ingress issue, a repaint warranty will not cover the wall where the water comes through.

Owner or occupant damage is excluded, as is failure caused by cleaning with unsuitable products, which is worth passing on to the building manager.

Normal wear in high-traffic areas — lobbies, stairwells, carpark walls — is often treated differently from the building envelope. Check whether internal common areas carry the same term as the exterior.

Conditions that can void it

Some warranties carry ongoing conditions, and a committee that does not know about them can void cover without realising.

Maintenance requirements are the common one: an annual or periodic wash-down of the exterior, particularly on coastal-facing or heavily exposed buildings. If that is a condition, someone has to actually do it and the records have to be kept.

Inspection requirements sometimes apply too, where the contractor reserves the right to inspect periodically.

Notification timeframes matter. Most warranties require defects to be reported within a set period of being noticed, and a committee that sits on a problem for two years may find the claim declined.

Who is actually standing behind it

A warranty is a promise from a legal entity, and it is worth knowing which one.

Check that the entity named on the warranty is the same one named on the contract and the invoice. Check how long it has been trading. A ten-year warranty from a company incorporated eighteen months ago is a different proposition from the same term offered by a long-established business, however good the current work is.

Ask whether the contractor carries the appropriate insurances and licensing for the value of work involved, and ask for evidence rather than assurance. For larger contracts there may be statutory warranty insurance requirements, and that is worth confirming with your strata manager.

How to compare warranties across quotes

Ask every tenderer the same questions in writing, and compare the answers rather than the headline years.

Ask for the workmanship warranty term separately from the product warranty. Ask whether rectification includes access costs. Ask what the exclusions are, in full. Ask what ongoing maintenance is required to keep it valid. Ask what the process is for making a claim and what the response timeframe is.

A contractor who answers these clearly and in writing is telling you something useful about how they operate. One who is evasive is telling you something too.

Document everything at handover

The warranty is only enforceable if you can show what was specified and what was done.

Keep the full scope of works, the product data sheets for every coating used, the number of coats specified per surface, photographic records of preparation and remedial work, and the signed warranty document itself. Store it where the next committee will find it, because the claim will almost certainly happen under a different committee than the one that signed the contract.

That handover pack is worth asking for explicitly as a contract deliverable.

Our strata and body corporate painting work across Melbourne CBD, Docklands, Southbank, Richmond, Carlton, Brunswick, Footscray and Box Hill includes the full documentation pack at handover, and our render repairs and remedial preparation work is scoped separately and openly for exactly the reason above — substrate problems are where warranties end.