concrete flooring ottawa | The Floor Company

Top 3 Benefits of Seamless Concrete Floor Coatings

Posted on March 27, 2015 by Greg Bell in Concrete with Comments Disabled

In this post we will go over the top 3 benefits of seamless coatings vs traditional seamed flooring types and cover some potential hazards of seamless flooring that you can avoid with proper planning.

1) Easy to Clean

Seamless flooring is easy to clean due to the lack of grout and smooth texture allowing for easy sweeping squeezing mopping and vacuuming without struggling to pick up debris that might get stuck in the grout of the floor.

Potential downside: If slipperiness is a concern special additives are available for seamless floors that will retain their ease of use while providing traction. There are also top coats that can be added at any time in the future if you find that years down the road, your floor is more slippery than you’d like.

2) No Contamination Intrusion

If your floor environment is ever exposed to contamination, it is much less likely that this will have a long term adverse affect because they’re are no intrusion causeways to the underside of your flooring due to the lack of grout creating an entry point for moisture or contamination intrusion.

Potential downside: In order to create a floor with these benefits, proper surface preparation and moisture and contamination testing must be employed prior to installation of a seamless floor. Just as a seamless floor is impermeable from the top it should also be permeable from underneath, therefore if contamination and moisture go unaddressed they cannot escape a seamless floor and this could lead to bubbles air pockets or de-lamination of your flooring investment.

3) Unlimited Styling and Branding Options

Both floor coatings and polished concrete allow for unlimited design elements due to their being no delineating lines distracting the eye from an overall impactful design. Floor designs can include safety zoning or directional retail pathways. With today’s coat-able high definition and 3D graphics, floors can create an environment that is literally out of this world.

Potential downside: Embedded floor graphics design and branding are a very permanent decision and would need to be mechanically removed or covered up by another coating or traditional flooring should branding change or a tenant owner move from the facility.

With all of these great ideas, your sure to be excited about your new seamless floor, don’t be shy to call today and share one of your unique ideas for your upcoming seamless flooring project.

Are Concrete Floors Cold and Damp?

Posted on February 17, 2015 by Greg Bell in Blog with Comments Disabled

Concrete can be a very cold material, as the material itself is smooth and unforgiving…however, concrete is no colder than ceramic or stone, so why give concrete the cold shoulder?

Unlike other materials, with concrete, you have the ability to install radiant heating cables, which are special cables that give off plenty of heat. By putting these in your concrete floors, you will experience heated flooring with concrete!

Concrete floors end up being warmer with this method, and if you are designing a home as opposed to simply re-flooring a room, see about allowing as many windows as possible, so that the concrete can take in the heat from the sunlight and hold it in, thereby making the floors even warmer (wintertime would be a nightmare without any sort of heating for your concrete floors).

It can become a terrible hassle if a concrete floor is built on a subgrade that does not drain accordingly, as this will cause your concrete floor to become awfully damp. Dampness can also occur from not having insulated the area properly enough, as moisture and water will then seep into the concrete and cause inevitable dampness.

So, for ensuring that your concrete floors are warm and dry, you must make sure that your floors are laid and installed correctly, and a bit of research on your own time would not go astray, as it would be in the greatest of benefits to you to know about concrete flooring installation beforehand, that way you can make sure the contractor is doing things correctly (if it’s a younger contractor, you run the risk of him not knowing any “tricks of the trade” or whatnot).

In today’s society, methods are being used to help stop moisture and water from getting in and under your concrete floors (besides insulation), and that is through contractors and carpenters placing a vapour barrier within the concrete slab, in order to protect from the invasion of moisture.

You see, at the end of the day, if your concrete floors are put in correctly, and they are heated properly, you would not have much to worry about in the way of walking on a stone-cold floor in the wintertime.

If you have any questions for a concrete professional, contact us today!

Are Concrete Floors Better Than Hardwood Floors?

Posted on January 29, 2015 by Greg Bell in Blog with Comments Disabled

‘Concrete’ Evidence as to the Myths of Concrete V.S Hardwood Flooring

What is Concrete Used for Nowadays?

Concrete flooring is steadily becoming a far more popular flooring material all over due to its newfound versatility. 30 years ago, you may have walked into a warehouse and seen a dismal, depressing grey concrete floor…but nowadays, you have the ability to stain concrete with acid, paint it, overlay it, or even put ‘radiant’ in-floor heating under the concrete so it’s not as frigid as usual. Concrete is ubiquitously placed all across the world now, and you can find it in business offices, warehouses (as before), and even inside homes, which may be what you are considering along with hardwood flooring.

Why Would Concrete be Better Than Hardwood Flooring?

Hardwood flooring, as some are starting to realize, actually has quite a few drawbacks in the long term. Hardwood flooring, if damaged by water, becomes mold-ridden and weak after a short time, whereas concrete is forever.

If you have hardwood floors in your house, over time, the hardwood eventually settles, and you might encounter problems of hardwood cracking if a nail was driven through it too much and you have a lot of hot and cold weather back-to-back.

When it comes to concrete, it is a material that is made to last. If concrete adorned the floors of your home, as opposed to hardwood, you would see, after several years, it’s as durable as ever. The only way you’d crack or break concrete is if you dropped something very durable and very sharp on it from a very high height, which would be very unlikely in your home.

Concrete is also very easy to clean (carpets and such notwithstanding) due to its incredible smoothness (mopping and sweeping wouldn’t ever be a problem). With hardwood flooring, dirt and possibly hair and other materials often get into the veins of the wood, and no sweeping or mopping job (not even vacuuming) can get rid of them.

As a finisher, if you damage any part of a hardwood floor (especially if it’s multiple planks), you’d find it nearly impossible to match a new piece with a broken piece, which may lead to you replacing all damaged planks.

At the end of the day, concrete flooring has an extremely long lifespan, and it’s easy to keep clean. Concrete is also forever, unlike hardwood. If you’re looking to talk to a concrete flooring professional today, contact us here.

Ice Melting Salts Are Damaging Your Concrete Surfaces

Posted on December 18, 2014 by Greg Bell in Concrete with Comments Disabled

Ice melting salts may reduce slip and fall issues but they are damaging our concrete surfaces.

North America is beginning to see more cities and commercial properties changing from sodium, potassium and calcium based salts to magnesium salts for the purpose of de-icing in winter months. While magnesium is a better ice melter, it is far more damaging to concrete than other options.

Peter G. Snow of Burns Concrete, Inc. in Idaho Falls, Idaho describes the situation well in his article titled: Magnesium Chloride As A Road Deicer: A Critical Review, below:

“While deicing salts containing sodium, potassium and calcium are chemically innocuous to concrete, this is not true of magnesium. The magnesium ions accumulate and react with the cementitious compound calcium- silicate-hydrate converting it to magnesium- silicate- hydrate ( or a mineral called brucite) which is non-cementitious in nature. In other words, a fundamental major mineralogical product of solidified concrete has now been chemically altered (completely changed). Formation of magnesium-silicate-hydrate breaks down the “glue” that binds aggregates together and concrete surfaces begin to deteriorate. The net effect is we now have a chemical and physical attack that concrete is not designed to withstand, nor be subjected to.”

While we can’t likely change the cities mind on what de-icing salts to use, it’s still important to avoid bringing these harsh chemicals in to our garages and places of business.

The solution to preventing contamination and subsequent damage to our concrete surfaces is to either seal, coat or impregnate concrete to prevent penetration of the magnesium chlorides.

If a decorative look is required for a concrete surface it is only an added benefit to use a coating such as epoxy or polyasparctic polyurea as both of these resins are impervious to damages from salts used to melt ice.

When a decorative appearance is not desired, budgeted for or needed, an impregnating treatment that forces a salt resistant chemical into the pores of a slab is a great solution for protecting your concrete from salt erosion.

For surfaces that have already been damaged by salt chlorides, there are many systems available today to repair, smooth and rejuvenate the concrete while also providing a treatment to the surface and beneath that will protect the area from further damage from salt chlorides.

Protect your concrete, especially newer concrete still in it’s curing window, from damage from salt by contacting a concrete surface expert today.

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