Use stabiliser or primer?

donmaico

Its regarding the use of stabiliser on a previously painted exterior wall prior to repainting.Advice I got was to scrape off all the loose stuff wash the wall, apply stabiliser and 3 coats of masonry paint.All good except in the scraping process i managed to bare or partly bare about 30-40% of the brickwork.Anyway i went off to Brewers ,explained the situation and the retailer suggested i should not use stabiliser on bare bricks. "Most commonly made mistake " he said,"Use primer on bare bricks and stabiliser on the rest", so i end up buying two things instead of oneI emailed Sandtex and they sent me this quote which suggests to me that its perfectly ok to use stabiliser both on painted or unpainted surfaces:
All surfaces must be sound, suitably dry and free from anything that will interfere with the
adhesion of the materials to be applied. Surfaces with suction (porous surfaces) should be
treated with an application of Sandtex Trade Water Borne Stabilising Solution.
Undecorated surfaces
All surfaces must be sound, suitably dry and free from anything that will interfere with the
adhesion of the materials to be applied

who is right? some of the bricks have spalled but I wouldnt describe them generally as powdery as such although it probably somewhat porous . The pointing is old and ie bit soft in parts, in fact I had to have some of it replaced it was so bad

nickj_2

stabilizer will bind any pointing and make it better for painting , i've always gone over the bare brickwork and pointing when i've scrapped off flaking paint and have never had any problems , i normally only give 3 coats to new rendering , one being a thinned coat ,

donmaico

nickj wrote: »

stabilizer will bind any pointing and make it better for painting , i've always gone over the bare brickwork and pointing when i've scrapped off flaking paint and have never had any problems , i normally only give 3 coats to new rendering , one being a thinned coat ,

So the retailer was wrong.Thats annoying as i applied exterior primer to a large section of bare brickwork when I could of just used stabiliser.Just have to hope it works ,Maybe I could just apply stabiliser over the whole wall, including the primed area ,and top coat over that

nickj_2

you only need to stabilize surfaces that are powdery , chalky or sandy , if you have primed there is no need to stabilize as well ,