Thermal paint?

[Weldinspect]

Hello
Any one with good experience with thermal paint in air conditioning pipe systems? we are having some problems of water condensation in our just installed system as you can see in the attached picture

 

[EnergyProfessional]

are you asking for paint that has some sort of insulation and vapor barrier function?
Paint in normal thickness never will have a significant R-value.

 

[Strong]

Why not use standard cylindrical foam or fiberglass pipe thermal insulation? Thermal paint??

Walt

 

[RossABQ]

While it looks promising and the salesmen can produce a raft of compelling data, I could never find a client willing to risk it. I'm sure performance and longevity vary wildly with ambient climate. Cost is way too high to be attractive, IMO.

 

[dbill74]

Where is the condensate coming from? Your post implies condensate is on cold piping, from the picture it is not clear what the source of the water on the floor is.
What is on the metal framing? AHU?
Is that a metal condensate drain pipe and the source of the water? If so, it needs insulation with vapor barrier. Just painting won't be enough. As EnergyProfessional said, paint is not going to have enough R-value to prevent condensation.

 

[lukaiENG]

I would agree with dbill74, it is not clear where the water is coming from at all. have you verified this?
RossABQ - which products have you seen compelling data for? I'd love to review - My gut/uninformed opinion tells me these products are snake oil. As the other commentators note a thin layer is not going to have a significant R value.
I would have put a drip tray under the AHU/CRAC or whatever it is. You could form one with angle iron & mastic.

 

[RossABQ]

@Lukai, I don't remember the brand or trade name, but it was "ceramic" something. It's something on the order of 60 mils applied thickness. We were looking at it for an exterior large-diameter water line that would have been very expensive to insulate/lag. There was no payback for conventional insulation but for various reasons the client's specs called for all exterior lines to be insulated.

"Compelling" to a salesman is different from "really compelling".