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Filler Up! The importance of control-joint fillers
by Loretta Hall
You’ve put a lot of time and effort into creating a beautiful concrete surface. You’ve even been realistic enough to include a pattern of joints to control cracking. Now, what can you do to make the joints as attractive and useful as possible?
The good news is that there are several options for filling or sealing the joints. However, you have to decide which type of product is most appropriate for your project.
The first thing to consider is the environment your slab is in. If joints in industrial floors are not filled properly, they can be damaged by forklifts and other vehicles. “The primary function of all of our (joint-filler) products is to protect the joint edges and provide load transfer from one slab to another,” says Alana Mallat, inside sales director for Metzger/McGuire. “It prevents the concrete from breaking off under the hard wheels and heavy loads that would typically be traveling across the floor in a warehouse or distribution center.”
Metzger/McGuire makes two lines of industrial floor joint-fillers: semirigid epoxies and semirigid polyureas. They can be tinted to any desired color. The difference between them, Mallat says, is a matter of convenience. “MM-80, which is an epoxy, usually takes about eight to 12 hours in an ambient floor, whereas our polyureas typically set up in anywhere from 30 minutes to two hours.”
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