Charlie: Cindy in Cypress sent us one. She says, “We’re getting ready to buy a beach house in Galveston.”
Tom: Yay.
Charlie: “Is there anything that can be done to protect the AC?” she says, because when she looks at the houses down there, Tom, they all have severe rust on the AC. Is there a particular type of paint that’s best to use down there?
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Tom: Well, that’s kind of a loaded question. Let’s start with the AC. No. It’s gonna rust away. Anything metal will rust away. Your brand new Mercedes will rust away. Your BMW will rust away.
Charlie: Unless you put it in Lake Conroe, like the one they fished out yesterday.
Tom: Yeah. You can do that.
Charlie: Lake Conroe’s not salt water, so that’s the best place to-
Tom: Yeah. Yeah. It’ll preserve it. Okay. You cannot win. I don’t care if you’re a gazillionaire and you spend $18 million on a home or you just have the little home that I had, that I bought for $58,000. It’s a little mobile I used to have down in Galveston.
Charlie: It was a house in name only.
Tom: Well, it was a double wide on stilts. Yeah. It really was, but we loved it. Me and the kids, we had a great time. The point is you can’t beat back the ocean. The ocean is a beautiful thing. I just spent last week on a little, short trip vacation with my wife at Padre Island, but, you know, even the hotels and stuff, they can’t beat back that salt air. They’re always maintaining it. They always have their people around trying to fix things, but things do wear out. No. The whole point is when you live on the ocean, you enjoy the ocean, but just don’t put anything down there you don’t mind losing within, in some cases, with a hurricane, 24 hours, or in other cases over the length of time things will rust, and you’ll have to replace them.
Charlie: Yeah. That’s why you would powder coat things, like Houston Powder Coaters-
Tom: It still won’t help, not on the ocean.
Charlie: Not on the-
Tom: You definitely powder coat things, and things are powder coated all the time, and powder coating is awesome, but I’ll tell you what. When it comes to salt, I’m not gonna fool anybody. Even the powder coasting guys will say, “Hey. When you’re on the ocean and you have that salt, salt will win.”
Charlie: Okay. On the paint issue I know you said yellow seems to weather best down there.
Tom: That’s for sunlight. That’s as far as fading goes. You will not have the fading color, but again, salt … I’m telling you, Charlie. Salt is just tough, man.
Charlie: It’s bad.
Tom: But it’s a beautiful place to live, you know? You just have to prepare your mind for it and buy things that will not be that important to you.