Exterior painting in San Bruno

Repainting San Bruno's 1950s houses

About 80.4% of San Bruno's 16,433 housing units were built before 1980, and 29.3% went up in the 1950s alone. Most of those houses have had several coats over the decades, and the oldest layers may contain lead: federal rules cover paid work that scrapes or sands paint on homes built before 1978. That is why the year the house was built is one of our first questions.

The Housing Element notes the strong winds that come through the San Bruno Gap. Wind dries a fresh coat too fast and blows grit into it, so on gusty days we paint the sheltered sides first. Being based here, we can pick the calm days. Painting is on the city's permit-exempt list.

Worth knowing about San Bruno

• As of the 2009 General Plan, about 3,000 San Bruno homes had benefited from aircraft noise insulation, funded since 1983 for homes inside SFO's 65 CNEL contour.
• Low-lying eastern San Bruno sits on filled marshland and floods occasionally, from old storm drains and exposure to tides; high tide plus heavy rain brings storm flooding next to residential areas.
• The San Andreas Fault runs through western San Bruno roughly along Skyline Boulevard, and eastern areas built on filled marshland may see liquefaction damage in an earthquake.