Review of Marathon Ceramic Products - By American Painting Contractor, March 2002

Best Paints You've Never Heard of

New technology is always a good place to start and this Spokane, WA-area based company has developed a truly revolutionary product that promises to have a big impact on the industrial and home side of the market.

The product is called Marathon Heat Reflective Coatings.  The theory is so good that it makes you wonder why this concept hasn't been unveiled before.

Actually, the idea of a coating that helps lower the interior temperature of a building, office or home on hot summer days isn't something exactly new.  There are some products on the market now which have been designed for this use.  But United Coatings has taken the idea and developed a product that is so good it offers breakthrough potential.

There have been a number of independent studies undertaken that show white coatings, formulated with ceramics, can offer insulation against heat gain at the hottest part of a 90-degree day that is equivalent to an R-20 rating.  But as the heat of the day diminishes, so does the R value so that companies who claim an R-20 insulation value are offering statistics based only on the high end of the spectrum.

Additionally, ceramics have been shown to have very little effect of deterring heat from escaping a structure.  The insulation value is roughly equal to an R-6 rating.

Marathon Heat Reflective Coatings are formulated to reflect the sun's heat, minimizing the expansion that is allowed to happen during the hottest hours of the day.  Testing has produced positive results that indicate Marathon's products reduce expansion very effectively and thus provide a noticeable improvement i performance over many of the traditional premium latex-type products.

Pure White Marathon products have been shown to deflect close to 90 percents of the sun's heat.  The darker the color, of course, the lower the heat reflection.

The technology of this new product evolved as the result of extensive testing performed by United Coatings.  The company wanted to formulate an architectural coating that addressed the major causes of paint degradations including:

• Harmful rays from the sun, including ultraviolet rays, which accelerate degradation and diminish long-term durability.

• Thermal movement, or the constant expansion and contraction that a paint film endures due to fluctuations in temperature.

• Wind Driven Rain

• Severe Temperature Extremes

• Distress Substrates

The Marathon Heat Reflective Coatings address each of these problems.

Marathon contains microscopic hollow spheres that come together to form a protective barrier against heat as the coating dries.  Ceramics have long been used in the industry to help insulate against high heat because of their highly emissive qualities, and Marathon's ceramic microspheres work in the same manner.

Marathon is formulated with the finest 100 percent acrylic polymers available; the same resins that have performed well for the company in their line of roof coatings.

Thermal movement is combated by the ability of the ceramic spheres to reflect heat during the day, resulting in far less movement thus less stress put on the paint film.  Marathon also contains elastomeric polymers to give the product a rubber-like quality that actually moves with the substrate.

As for the wind driven rain, the tough rubber-like membrane formed by Marathon paints cure so it acts as a barrier against moisture.  And the 100 percent acrylic resin used in the products will withstand temperatures up to 130 degrees and down to minus-30 degrees Fahrenheit so it will not heat, age or slump.

One of the toughest challenges a paint contractor faces is making severely distressed surfaces look new again.  So Marathon Clear Sealer is designed to fill and bridge cracks unlike other products on the market.  It has over 700 percent elongation to provide maximum bridging ability.  The exceptional elongation also reduces surface tension by imparting less pressure on old paint surfaces to reduce the possibility of pulling up the existing finish.