VOC in 2011

Many of you may of heard about VOC’s but are unaware what they are and what it all means.

VOC stands for Volatile Organic Compound, what that you may ask, VOC’s are solvents within solvent-based paints such as gloss, undercoat and varnishes. These solvents evaporate into the atmosphere as the paint dries. You can tell how high the VOC’s are in a tin of paint normally by the distinctive smell you get off from them, gloss has a high VOC content where as emulsion has a low VOC content.
If you look at the side of the paint tin it will have a symbol and also some writing about the VOC content in the tin.
VOC’s contribute to environmental air pollution and in turn damage the ozone layer.

In the past year there has been a lot of news in the press about paint being ‘VOC Compliant’. From the 1st of January 2011 the sale of non-compliant products will be forbidden.

So can I still buy and use non-compliant paint

As from January 2011 you are unable to buy non-compliant paints, as it is now illegal to sell them. If you have older paint, say in the garage or shed, you are still allowed to use them. It maybe worth thinking about if you will need more paint than what you already have as the new VOC compliant paint may differ slightly to the older paints you have.

Search online for more information about VOC’s and the current law.

Useful links

Some related links:

• Dulux
• Crown Paints
• ICI Paints
• Wikipedia – Volatile_organic_compound
• British Coatings Federation

Continuing the social network

It was this time last year when we signed up to Twitter, you can read my experiences about my first year on Twitter in my recent post.

Property Decorating on Facebook

We are always looking at our site and blog for ways of improving things, bring more information to people like yourselves, and ways in which we can have contact with the public and visa versa, to this end we have signed up to a business Facebook account.

Social Media

We shall be using this account as another means to communicate what we do to people as well as a way of notifying people with news and blog updates.

You can see our Facebook page here.

Share, Like, Tweet

We have also added some ‘Share’ and ‘Like’ buttons on some of the pages on the site and all the posts on our decorating blog (At the bottom of each post).
We hope that if you find either a page, such as the calculator pages, or and post on the blog interesting or useful, you will use the share or like buttons, (and not forgetting the tweet button) to let your friends know about it.

Twitter, a year on

2010 saw www.propertydecorating.co.uk joining Twitter, and now in January 2011 a year on, has it all been worth it?

On January 1st 2010 I signed up to Twitter with no real expectations, I have been tweeting for a year now.
I have made lots of new contacts, from people in the decorating trade such as painters and decorators, as well as companies supplying all sorts of things from wallpaper to tool and sundries, also some famous celebrity types to individual crafts people such as stained glass and hand painted wallpaper and some designers as well.

So a very varied selection of people, I tweet regularly with lots of people and have discovered some real talents that I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend or use myself.

Through my tweeting I met Françoise Murat (@FrancoiseM), an Interior and garden designer, I wrote a guest article for her blog about our wallpaper calculator. You can read the full article here http://www.francoisemurat.com/interior-design/231–wallpaper-amazing-decorative-wall-coverings.html. As Françoise also guest blogs for Sarah Beeny’s website Tepilo (@tepilo) my article was also featured on Tepilos blog, you can see that article here https://www.tepilo.com/blog/2010/05/a-british-approach-to-decoration-wallpapers/.

I also tweeted with Dulux Trade (@DuluxTrade) and through this I wrote a short piece about a horror tale for their TradeXpress newsletter ‘Tales of Horror’ section in December last year. I blogged about this at the time, you can see my blog post here https://www.propertydecorating.co.uk/blog/?p=276 or read the article in the December 2010 TradeXpress newsletter if you can get your hands on one or via their website https://www.duluxtradepaintexpert.co.uk/editorial/adrian-rayfield.

January 2011

This January saw an addition to the blog and website, we have added ‘Tweet’ buttons on each blog post, these can been seen just before the comments section. We have also added these buttons on some pages across the website, such as all the calculator pages and wallpaper symbols page.
If you find a blog article useful or interesting, or think the calculators are a handy tool, please tweet about them. Simply hit the Tweet button, a new window opens with pre-filled text and a link to the page, you can add text if you wish or simply hit the Tweet button. This tweet will then appear in your time line.

So has it all been worth it, definitely, and I shall be continuing to Twitter.

You can keep up with what I am doing simply by following me @propertydecor.

I Tweet about new blog post, any industry news I feel would benefit people and of course any news to do with www.propertydecorating.co.uk.