POLYASPARTIC SYSTEMS FOR FLOORS

Source:www.stonediamondtool.com Date:2022/6/27 Read:108

The polyaspartic market is a bit confusing right now as it grows and evolves. The base polymers are still all produced by Bayer, which holds the patent on polyaspartic polyureas. In the U.S. there are companies like Flexmar, Key Resin, and Rapid Coating Systems that sell formulated polyaspartic coatings in bulk, primarily to distributors. Flexmar was the first company to bring this system to market. "We came onto a patented material that made it possible to successfully do a coating in one day," said Flexmar's Jack Bracco. "This was introduced at the 2006 World of Concrete and we've been involved with thousands of floors since then."

Today, there are several companies marketing polyaspartics as complete decorative concrete floor systems. For example, Doug Bannister's The Stamp Store recently introduced One-Day Floors, which combines the polyaspartic coatings with various decorative treatments (pigments, dyes, stains, vinyl chips, or quartz sand) resulting in a complete system. "We are making the product contractor friendly and putting it with systems and products and procedures and application techniques, including training," said Bannister. The Stamp Store is staging classes in Oklahoma City—ironically, a two-day class for a one-day floor.

Other companies that have come out with similar systems are HP Spartacote, Citadel Floor Finishing Systems, Premier Garage, Versatile Building Products and Advantage Chemical Coatings. All of these systems add a solvent to reduce the solids content of the polyaspartic coating to make it easier to handle and to increase the absorption into, and therefore the bond to, the concrete base. This is a critical factor in the success of a polyaspartic coating—it's ability to "wet" the concrete surface.

"Our material is 75% solids, which is a big deal because in the polyaspartic world everything starts out at 100%, which is sometimes hard to use," said Advantage Chemical Coatings' Mason Harms. "And we made it so that it's a one-to-one mix—one part A to one part B. Polyaspartics at 100% solids are 2:1 which can throw people off. We wanted to make it so that the guy who's never done this before can go through one of our training classes and have the confidence go out and nail a floor the first time."