DECORATIVE CONCRETE
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BY JEFF HERSHBERGER
Know Your Concrete Coating Types & Pick the Right Coating for the Job With new concrete coatings constantly being developed, keeping track of coatings like epoxy, polyaspartic, polyurethane or polyurea can be confusing. Let’s scratch the surface and clear up that confusion.
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hy so by continuously many developing new options? technologies to meet Why can’t we have Deco-Crete Supply the requests of installone coating to serve all our needs? Things are not ers. With all the options quite that easy. available, things can get a bit conOne of the challenges for a concrete fusing, and keeping track of coatings coating contractor is the wide variety of like epoxy, polyaspartic, polyurethane situations that you might find yourself or polyurea can be hard enough on its in from day to day. Metallic epoxy, own. Then, you have all the different broadcast floors, high-build flooring, variants of each specific coating—most one-day garage floors, or a grind-dyemanufactures will offer three or four coat system could all require different formulations of just polyaspartic alone. coatings to get the job done. Some jobs might even require multiple types of HIGH-BUILD FLOORING coatings on the same floor. This may SYSTEMS seem overwhelming at first, but as you Thickness is the star of the show for start to understand the characteristics high-build flooring systems. Whether of each coating things will make more the floor needs some additional sense. This article will scratch the leveling, or if the situation calls for an surface on a few of the scenarios you extreme wear layer to handle heavy might encounter and what type of industrial use. First off, it’s important to coating could help solve the problem. understand the scope of the term “highThe popularity of concrete coatings build” in the world of concrete coatings. has been on the rise for the last decade My first five years of involvement in or so, and the industry has responded the decorative concrete industry were
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Spreading out a fast setting coating. Garage floors in the 500- to 1,000-sq ft. are perfect for this type of concrete coatings. Deco-Crete Supply
pretty exclusive to stamped concrete. We measured things with a tape measure and "1/4 in." was a really small measurement. After getting into concrete coatings, however, I started to realize that things are measured in Mils not inches and that 1/4 in. would equal 250 mils (an incredibly thick coating). Most of the coatings systems that I have dealt with are applied anywhere between 6-30 mils. We would consider anything over 15 mils a high-build coating. Not all concrete coatings will be suitable to build up that thick in one coat. Polyaspartic, for example, should never exceed 8 mils per coat. The coating of choice in most highbuild situations will be 100% solids epoxy. This stuff has been around for a long time and is still one of the most
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6/10/21 10:33 AM
