There are dealers for California Paints as well as Pratt and Lambert in the D.C. and Maryland market. I have experience with Pratt and Lambert paints and it has a solid reputation. California Paints is supposed to be a great product and I have talked to people who absolutely love it. They use Accolade in leiu of California. The 2010 is California's latest product and is better than Fresh Coat but is downrated because of the price. I don't have any experience with Kelly Moore paint. It is a small regional paint company. I have heard several paint contractors rave about MAB paints(M.A. Bruder paints) which is also available in your market. Their premium product is Seashore, which was developed for the Jersey Lighthouses. The mildew has little to do with the preparation or paint. Exterior paint has some mildewcide in it and will resist damage from the mildew. I must caution you about using a mildewcide additive in any paint. It automatically voids the warranty on the paint. If the paint store offers you an additive on your paint, tell them no. The problem is that the paint manufacturer has no control over the additives and will claim a paint failure on the additive. Mildew can be cleaned off with some bleach and water and can be sprayed or sponged on the surface and rinsed off. I highly recommend staying away from a flat finish, use at least an eggshell or satin finish. The sheen helps to keep mildew from affecting the paint.

Out of the choices Above I'd say BM is your best bet. Behr products are too watered down and their white is more of a gray so that effects the way the colors comes out when tinted. Stay away from SW they are a bit better than behr but they over price for the amount of TITO in their paint as well. BM offers a beautiful color selection and has an exellent product. HOWEVER I would love to put Dunn Edwards in the running here. We have an amazing selection of nearly 2,000 colors (not mention custom color mathces we can do), a superior paint product and a FREE Professional Color Advisor service (that's me) . Plus we have a ton of "kill test" listed on our website and in our store comparing each of our products to the competition. (: but like I said BM is a nice choice!

hmlinca- I'd definitely stick with the VS and ask for the inline flowmeter. 4 speeds should be plenty for your needs. The ability to have more than 4 speeds sounds nice on paper, but in reality once you have a few speeds that are found to work OK, these will be the primary ones you use all the time. The VF will likely cause problems with future solar needs as it will get confused by system pressures and not run at the speed intended. Mechanically, these pumps are identical and efficiency will be the same for both. The only difference is the drive algorithms to control speed vs. pressure. With the VF, it may actually use more energy than the VS when used as a filter pump. This is because it will try to increase pump speed to compensate for added backpressure as your filter gets dirty. This added pump speed will consume more watts. With the VS, you simply select the preferred speed for filtering and then monitor your filter pressure to determine when it's time to clean it. Yeah, flow will go down slightly with the VS as the filter gets dirty, but this is not a big deal. At least you have a sign that the filter is getting dirty as your flow decreases. With the VF, the only sign you have is a louder pump as speed increases and a higher energy bill at the end of the month. I'd definitely keep the VS and ask for the flowmeter. Hope this helps!

I offered Durapoxy in my entry package b/c it has a recoat time of 4 hours vs 24 with oil or oil hybrids (oil resins in a water base) like Epic, Advance or Pro classic hybrid) and isnt tacky after drying. In production time saved equals money saved. We can paint and reassemble a Durapoxy kitchen in 1 or 2 days vs 3 or 4 with oil/hybrid. Many Many small apt kitchens we were able to paint and reassemble same day which allowed us to offer the service for <$1K and maintain decent margins and a pricing advantage over our competitors. Recoat times are a major consideration.