Restoring forty-year-old Alucobond panels without repainting

9200 Mineral Ave is an office building in Englewood, just outside Denver. Its facade is aluminum composite panel, the Alucobond type, with glass windows in metal frames. It looks modern, which is exactly what makes it hard to maintain: there is nowhere for a mistake to hide.

Forty years of oxidation

After more than forty years the panels had gone dull and blotchy with oxidation and embedded staining, and the window frames were showing rust. The owner was weighing a repaint, which on a facade this size is a different order of expense from cleaning it.

Why the panels were the hard part

Alucobond and panels like it carry a factory coating that most industrial cleaners will damage. Strip that finish and you have not restored the panel, you have committed the building to paint. Anything used on it has to lift the oxidation and leave the coating intact.

What was used

EnviRestore Metal Stain Remover took off the surface staining and oxidation and brought the panels back to their original appearance, with the factory finish still on them. Metal Protector MD followed as the protective layer, which is what keeps the discoloration from simply returning in a year or two. The aluminum window frames were prepped and repainted separately.

How it came out

The panels and frames came back clean and went back into service protected rather than repainted. For an owner looking at a forty-year-old facade, that is the useful finding: age alone does not mean the panels are finished.