What exactly are you suggesting to paint?Painting over a control box seems like it would void the warranty of a new unit.
Yes, I was suggesting painting the box. And yes, it might void the warranty. You could call the manufacturer to inquire about that. Or you could wait to paint it on the day after the warranty expires.
I'm waiting out the warranty on several of my surveillance cams. I don't like their color. As soon as the warranty expires, I'll paint the inside ones the color of the ceiling, and the outside ones the color of my stucco.
I have a control box at my pad for my Pentair IntellipH. It gets a lot of sun. I've anticipated its failure and have gotten a hold of a failed unit from a fellow TFPer. When the current box gets too bad, I'll swap its guts into the box of the failed one, and get many more years out of it.
For other things in my yard, I use a cheap piece of flashing to block the sun. From Lowes, and it's already painted. In some cases, I used it flat, as is. In other cases I bent it into the shape of a little roof, to shed both sun and rain.
Flashing comes in all shapes and sizes, some pre-bent. Steel or aluminum. Relatively easy to work with, especially the aluminum, which won't rust.
For my exterior home automation components (indoor-only gizmos that I needed outside), I mounted them into a weather-proof box. Available on Amazon in all shapes and sizes. I just painted two of them the other day, because when I mounted the new one next to the old one, I realized the box was getting hit too much by the UV. They protect my gizmos from sun and rain, and don't impact their warranty. I drilled holes in the bottoms of the boxes, to pass cables through PVC conduit. And then I painted the PVC conduit, too.
Before the new one went in, so before paint:
Lots of ways to skin this cat...
Other outdoor UV tips:
- I no longer use zip-ties outside, even the UV-rated ones. I use stainless steel wire, impervious to the elements, that will outlast me:
- I've covered all the cables on my pad with wire loom. The loom fails eventually from UV, but I figure I'd rather replace some very cheap loom once every few years, than more expensive, more labor-intensive cables, or have to throw away an expensive component because of its irreplaceable cable. When I bundled a bunch of those cables together, I used a chunk of pool vacuum hose as a UV blocker.
I have hundreds of feet of this stuff, all over my yard, protecting wires and cables.
