garage floor coating ottawa | The Floor Company - Part 2
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Acid Stained Concrete Vs. Dyes and Tints

Posted on October 21, 2014 by Greg Bell in Concrete with Comments Disabled

While most people are happy with a natural coloured concrete slab, some opt for a more brilliant colour or just a slight change in the tone of grey and light beige’s that are naturally occurring when polishing and/or sealing concrete.

Acid Stains

In the past, the most common way to change the colour of a concrete slab was to do an acid stain or acid wash.

Acid stains require a lot of labor and immense amounts of water to be introduced into the slab in order to carry the acid and the resulting reaction that occurs when the acid and concrete properties meet.
Acid Stained Concrete Vs. Dyes and Tints colour chart
While this technique is time tested and proven, it does present certain issues such as adding a lot of moisture to a slab that is  going to be sealed next.

Using water to penetrate and stain a concrete slab means that the slab will have to dry for many days prior to a sealer being applied. Even when using a water-based sealer, there is a certain risk that is being taken when applying it to a floor that was recently wet or damp. The sealer could flake off or be weaker in the long run. Also, if you require an impact resistant floor or wish to finish with a coating such as an epoxy or a polyaspartic, the floor must be grinded first prior to being sealed.

When doing an acid stain, this is not necessarily the best outcome as grinding the floor prior to staining it will reduce its ability to take on a new colour

Concrete DyesAcid Stained Concrete Vs. Dyes and Tints 1

Decorative concrete dyes and concrete dye systems have come a long way and, in our opinion have replaced acid stains as the go-to product to use for staining concrete that will be sealed or polished.

These decorative dye systems are first sprayed down on the floor and either scrubbed in or left to dry. There is no need to neutralize them with large amounts of water or neutralizing agents. This means that, the floor can be polished or sealed on the same day that it was stained.

Another advantage to using concrete dyes as opposed to concrete acid stains is that the colour is much more predictable because there is no requirement for a chemical reaction in order to achieve the look that you are going for.

Concrete dyes can be used to change the overall colour of the floor but can also be used to create borders, accents, logos or really any other effects you may be going for.

If you would like more information about concrete dyes and stains, please contact us today to talk to one of our specialists.

Polished Concrete Floors for Commercial Locations

Posted on October 8, 2014 by Greg Bell in Concrete with Comments Disabled

When choosing a concrete floor for your commercial location, it is always important to remember the environment that your floor will be presented with.

If the environment will be exposed to a lot of salt under foot traffic or especially large amounts of traffic, despite popular belief, polished concrete is not necessarily the best choice or even a good second choice.

While polished concrete floors are stronger and more abrasion resistant than epoxy coatings or other similar coatings or sealers, they do remain porous under a very thin layer of guard. This guard is used to prevent immediate staining on polished concrete but is certainly not a topping or permanent blockage to staining and salt penetration.

If your commercial concrete floor is an interior space that will not be exposed to contaminations such a salt and gasoline, polished concrete may very well be the better solution where abrasion resistance and impact resistance are the most important.polished concrete company ottawa

If you need your floor to be a good mix of both a coating and polished concrete, a middle ground can be found by using a floor coating with a more highly abrasion resistant topcoat such as an acrylic or polyurethane.

There are, again more options for commercial concrete flooring that can be discussed with an expert in the field. Some of these options may not even include coating or polishing but rather a chemical treatment of the floor to change its property to allow for a dust free abrasion resistant and impact resistant floor with no visual change to its sheen or colour.

Among all of the options available to you for commercial concrete floors, they can each be customized to match your needs even more closely. Such as, additional coats or self-levelling sand bases to increase the life and impact resistance even further.

Another thing to pay attention to is the common misconception that a non-slip floor needs to be an abrasive floor, or a floor with sand in it. This is not actually the case. There are many ways to put a top coat on a floor without having any type of texture that makes it hard to clean in order to achieve a higher slip resistance.

Some of these options include a non-slip wax or a topcoat of urethane. Not only do these finishes provide a lower slip factor to the floor, they also protect the underlying investment by creating a wear barrier that is less expensive to install and maintain.

The best way to know for sure what the best option is for your commercial space is to contact one of our commercial flooring experts and go over the exact use of a your space. Our experts will be able to inform you to make the right direction.