Is Your Building Green

Given the poor condition of many commercial properties, despite the amount spent on yearly maintenance, millions of real estate professionals, worldwide, are recognizing the need to change the products and techniques used to maintain commercial office buildings. Acknowledging this, Presto Restoration Products, Inc. has made a commitment to revolutionize the restoration and maintenance industry by developing: Green Synergy Products™ – a highly efficient, environmentally conscious, safer product line for commercial high-rise properties. Download Detailed Information via pdf.

Green Synergy Products actually save you money. View Presto’s 10-Year Return on Investment, which demonstrates the manner in which using Presto’s products to maintain a commercial property reduces costs, when compared to competitive product options. In this example, a property could save over $255,500 within a 10-year period.

The real estate industry identifies certain buildings as “Green Buildings.” These properties take extra steps to create safer, cleaner, and environmentally friendly spaces to work, live and play. This concept applies to the exterior of commercial properties as well. Our Green Synergy Products work together in order to clean, and protect, every surface of the building while conforming to the following standards.

 

Green Synergy Products

• Require fewer applications or produce better coverage rates – Increased product efficiency means decreased application rates. Some treatments are often required ten to twenty times less throughout the life of a property. 

• Sustainable results – High-performance protective treatments, in combination with superior cleaning products and techniques, yield a greater return on your restoration investment. 

• Long-term cost savings – Surfaces protected with Green Synergy Products can be maintained with easy cleaning processes, instead of frequent and expensive restoration procedures. 

• Less pollution – Partially inorganic protective treatments do not break down as rapidly as organic treatments, and therefore, prevent greater amounts of pollution from degrading into the environment. 

• Lack harsh chemicals – Safer, environmentally friendly products increase performance without using dangerous, harsh chemicals. 

• Don’t produce soap scum residue – Conventional products create soap scum and mineral stains on building surfaces.

In contrast, we use the term Brown Building Syndrome to classify the many buildings worldwide still using traditional, less environmentally friendly chemicals to preserve the architectural surfaces of their properties. Brown Buildings tend to leach chemicals and environmental pollution into our working areas, and ground water, as the products react against each other and deteriorate. 

 

Products that cause Brown Building Syndrome

• Prove inefficient and do not last as long as new chemical technologies, thus creating the need for more frequent chemical applications. 

• Contain oils that remain on building surfaces, attracting and gluing environmental contaminants to these surfaces. 

• Include unnecessary, harsh chemicals. 

• Form and leave soap scum and mineral deposit stains on building surfaces. 

• Consist of organic materials that leach into the environment as they degrade, causing stains on architectural surfaces.

This image shows a property with Brown Building Syndrome.

 

Buildings with Brown Building Syndrome can be restored to function as a Green Building through the use of Presto’s Green Synergy Products and cutting-edge maintenance methods. Unfortunately, even new buildings can develop Brown Building Syndrome soon after completion if the wrong products are selected during the construction phase and certain issues are not addressed.

 

Building Maintenance Industry Standards

• FACT – The dishwashing detergents most commonly used today for cleaning windows are designed to break up and emulsify oils. This includes the same water repellant oils that are commonly applied to the precast, or stone material, in order to protect the surface. 

• FACT – Oily, surfactant-based window cleaning detergents, commonly used today, reside on building surfaces and attract environmental pollutants such as dust, dirt, minerals from stone material, minerals from tap water, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and particles from acid rain. Each time it rains, these substances combine to create a new, and unknown, mixture that is then washed down the building, collecting in high concentrations on the surrounding building surfaces and the ground. 

• FACT – High mineral content tap water, used during the window cleaning and pressure washing process, deposits high amounts of minerals and salts onto building surfaces which causes stains. 

• FACT – Silane and siloxane water-repellant products used to seal precast, GFRC and other architectural stone are organic, UV- and heat- sensitive materials. Although these materials may work in a lab environment, certain solutions do not withstand the elements high-rise buildings are subjected to such as: higher temperatures and increased exposure to UV rays. When attacked by the elements, these UV-sensitive materials rain down failed water repellant molecules, staining other building materials, and collecting around the base of the building.

Our products are designed to work in harmony, instead of in conflict with each other, to protect all building surfaces. Ultimately, a building that is restored and maintained using Green Synergy Products will only need to be cleaned with purified water every six to 12 months — and this is the most environmentally friendly option conceivable.

The glass on this building was only five years old and suffers from Brown Building Syndrome.