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Coatings are liquid or semi-liquid mixtures applied to cured concrete to make it more aesthetically pleasing, improve its durability, boost its longevity and/or reduce upkeep and repairs.
For decorative concrete artisans, an exciting new direction for polyaspartic coatings is countertops and sinks. One contractor, Dave Paterson of Desert Canyon Epoxy Floor Coatings, based in Scottsdale, Ariz., has elevated the technique he uses for commercial floors to counter level.
If you think that converting 22,000 square feet of flooring from heavily pitted ceramic tile to sleek, glossy, stylish concrete isn’t hard enough, try completing your mission in a “live” supermarket. Take on the added challenge of racing the clock in the middle of the night to get one section completed before the daily load of feet and shopping-cart wheels travels over its still-unfinished and barely dry surface.
Vexcon Chemicals Inc., which has manufactured epoxies under the PowerCoat brand for more than 15 years, has become the first company to introduce breathable epoxies to the market.
High-performance building products maker Ardex Americas (the North American wing of Germany-based Ardex Group) is slowly transforming each of its six North American locations into showcases of the manufacturer’s products.
The project at a new Toyota dealership took 10 days in October 2013. Because this 40,000-square-foot area encompassed outdoor service bays, customer waiting area and indoor parts department, this was an area that customers would see but also an area where the cars and trucks would be worked on.
When Vanilla Ice calls, flooring contractors answer. In 2009, Rob Van Winkle, the rapper best known for the hit “Ice Ice Baby,” started hosting a television show called “The Vanilla Ice Project,” featuring home improvements.
One of concrete’s few downsides is the amount of waiting a contractor, and customer, must do while the concrete sets or coatings dry. Some of that waiting time is now significantly reduced, thanks to RapidShield from Epmar Corp., a subsidiary of Quaker Chemical Corp.
The label “paint on steroids” has been attached to polyaspartic coatings due to the technology’s claims of high-build, fast-cure concrete floor coatings that promise gloss, low-VOC content, film toughness and long-term durability.
One nice thing about a metallic coating, in contrast to acid stains or dyes, is its ability to fully cover cracks and other defects, regardless of their size. Lemon says he’s also been using metallic pigments as accents in microtoppings to get certain shading and highlighting effects.
Jimmy McGhee, who handles sales and technical support for Versatile Building Products, here offers his own unique tips and techniques for distributing mica flake on a flooring job.
