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Comment by p-e-w | Hacker News Reader

A paint job takes up to 3 years today, yet the entire tower (including painting) was built in 2 years, 140 years ago?!?

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It wasn't open while it was being built, but it is open while being painted.

And I dare say they could paint it much much faster if they really needed to, but it would involve very large crew for a short period of time.

Better for everyone involved if the work is basically steady - then you can hire one group or company for a three year stint, instead of hiring 5-10x for 6 months.

Might even be better to delay it even further so you can just keep painting indefinitely with a small crew.

That's what SF doesa with the golden gate. Want to say it gets repainted every 18 months or something?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forth_Bridge#Maintenance

I imagine you could just tape it, wrap it and then fumigate it with paint. Would go much quicker.

Someone tell me why I’m wrong

The obvious, much quicker way would be to drop the required 60 tonnes of paint from Canadairs in a fly by. /s

You’ll miss lots of nooks and crannies because you can’t convince the air currents to blow in every conceivable way to move paint around. You air movement apparatus will take on much of the paint, probably causing it to function in much less than an ideal manner. There are challenges with keeping the paint wet while moving it with air pressure.

You could probably get VC funding to solve these problems and then you’d be onto something.

Depending on how paint "wears out" maybe the parts you would miss are the parts that don't really need to be repainted.

I don't think there's any part of the structure that doesn't need repainted, or rain/dust will get in and tear it apart over decades.

> fumigate

I guess it'd be more like the electrostatic paint they do for cars. Negatively charge your object and positively charge your paint...

Where do you think “speed” sits on the stack-ranking of priorities for Eiffel Tower repainting/surface maintenance?

For a monument of its value, I would almost think speed/lower cost would be seen as red flags.

The numbers measure different things, so hard to compare. One of the biggest sources of variation listed is the weather, while the first paint was done in a workshop (presumably where there is no influence from the weather).

Also, a painting campaign also includes:

> ... a preparatory stage to search for the most corroded areas ... these areas are then stripped, and a first coat of an anti-rust primer is applied

...presumably there was no corrosion just after the parts were originally made.

For sure on corrosion/rust - I’m experiencing this on a very small scale now - I’m working on repainting my old barbecue, it’s incredible how much time it takes to strip, apply rust remover, clean, fill, sand, prime and repaint the metal parts. Easily 5 to 10 times as much effort and time than it would take to paint fresh parts.

I am pretty sure the original materials also had to be sand blasted then shop primed. Raw steel material usually comes without any protection and stays outside for a long time.

To be fair that would mean taking it apart, repainting and rebuilding it would optimistically take 4 years, so painting it in situ is still faster.

I think the question is why does it take longer to paint it than it took to build it?

Did they build it then paint it? Or paint it (the components, during fabrication), then build it, with already-painted components?

They pained individual pieces before assembly but that was included in the total construction time.

that's the point of the question. of course this is much faster than building then painting.

Because they probably didn't need to strip any old paint off first.

I my experience of painting houses etc (limited I know), the actual painting bit is the final 25-33% of the time. The rest of it is making the rest of it ready to be painted. So stripping off, preparing the surfaces, making good any bad bits etc ... only then can you start to paint it.

When they had fresh new metal to work with they could probably just paint straight away with zero prep. It may have even arrived at the site already primed. Plus it was probably easier logistics too in terms of seeing which bits were painted or not - if you are painting over the same colour it is hard to know what you have done and what you have not unless you are quite meticulous. However if you have a good contrast you could just give paintbrushes to 100 people and say "keep painting until all the grey bits are red" or whatever and not worry about the planning or tracking of which bits have been done when - just keep going until everything is red or whatever.

As a housepainter, this is probably the best reasoning and where my mind immediately jumped to. The prep work in painting is as you said the majority of the work -- many many many hours spent first slowly destroying something further, then bringing a surface back to the state where, finally, you get to make it all one solid color of protection, once again.

Generally the largest difference in a homeowner painted themselves vs a professional painter -- the amount of prep work required can be astronomical and absolutely mind numbing but without it, one will never end up with the final very nice and long(er) lasting result.

Once again, you get back what you put in!

This guy paints.

Seriously though, if you use house drywall painting over existing paint as an example, the actual "paint on surface" step really is short. In my most recent paint adventure the procedure was:

o move furniture

o lay down canvas

o tape

o sand

o [prime, depends on base and final color]

o paint

o wait to dry

o sand

o paint

o undo the coverings.

o enjoy.

It is very difficult to get all that done in one day, but I see new house interiors get basically painted in one-two day by a crew of like 6 guys, followed by an unending series of touch-ups where the painters did a half-assed job on trim, ceilings, and large featureless wall sections where it's difficult to see where paint is lacking.

IME Painting is boring and very easy to get wrong so I have respect for painters that patiently do the job right the first time.

Painting a room is one of those weird jobs that takes a lot of concentration (especially cutting in), and very little thought. I find it goes better with a beer in one hand. Given that basically every paint can opener on the planet is also a bottle opener, I suspect that I'm not the only one.

The article says there are 50 painters. I'm sure there were more than 50 people working to build it.

Doing this with fewer employees over a longer period of time may just be more efficient. Surely they could speed it up by throwing more money at it, but does that help with anything?

Sounds like you're unaware of what is involved in repainting. You don't think they just climb up and spray over the bird crap and other contaminates? 80% of the work is in prep and the technology in coatings 140 years ago wasn't where it's at today.

as an analogy, consider that renovating often is much more difficult and complex than new construction. As you build up you're making some irreversible moves, i.e. you build a door or a set of trusses, now you can't move a large piece through it anymore.

On the other hand, building it took a lot more manyears than one round of repainting.

They also appear to be stripping the old paint during this re-painting process.

Because they’re using very old methods. We have much more modern ways to paint metal that aren’t being used. They could use electrostatic painting and finish the thing in a day if they really wanted.

https://www.ghasterpaintinginc.com/blog/what-electrostatic-p....

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