
It’s fourth and goal with three seconds left in the game. You’re behind by four points. The other team seems to know your every move. Do you try to punch it through straight up the middle and hope for the best? Or do you have something a little different up your sleeve?
How often this scenario plays out in the game of concrete floor finishing. The construction project is overdue and over budget. You’re called in to execute the game-winning play. Often, it involves a polyaspartic floor finish. However, flooring contractors who like the running-back speed of polyaspartics have expressed needs that new twists in raw materials and coating formulas are addressing. Let’s discuss the coating’s stats, your unmet needs, and solutions that have evolved over the last few years.
A Bit of Statistics
Polyaspartic coatings have been used since the early 1990s in industrial protective applications such as bridge infrastructure, water and wastewater, and transportation, where high durability and fast return-to-service are highly valued. These coatings were then formulated for floors to satisfy end-users’ desire to protect assets with minimal disruption to operations.
One primary reason that polyaspartics moved from the bench to first string as a top player in the concrete floor coatings lineup is their excellent return-to-service time compared with epoxies and acrylics. The chemistry’s unique and adjustable reactivity allows for the design of fast-curing coatings tailored to specific applications. Traditional two-component aliphatic polyurethanes typically cure (defined here as dry-to-touch) in six hours to12 hours, for example, while polyaspartic coatings typically cure in 1 hour to 4 hours even at concrete slab temperatures below 40 degrees F.
Along with high film build, low-temperature curing, abrasion resistance, and corrosion resistance, their cure speed is a win for you and your client.
Changes to the Playbook
Although standard polyaspartic coating stats make them a first round pick in anyone’s fantasy football league roster, floor finishers have encountered challenges and voiced their opinions on ways to make the coatings even better. You want:
- Longer working time
- Retain a fast return-to-service time
- Low odor during application
- Availability from preferred suppliers
Let’s talk about these challenges and how the industry is addressing them.
A Few More Seconds in the Pocket
Concrete floors have become an important interior space design element. Most of the application defects, such as bubbles, knit lines, roller marks, and fish eyeing, that may have been overlooked in the past with fast-cure coatings are now less acceptable. As a result, contractors have asked for longer working time. Just like giving the quarterback a little more protection to give receivers time to get downfield, 10 minutes to 20 more minutes working time increases the chances of a defect-free application.
Resin suppliers are responding.
Covestro LLC, the inventor of polyaspartic technology in the 1980s, developed a slow resin that formulators can use to increase working time without sacrificing long-term durability or aesthetics. As a result, coatings that extend work time from 10 minutes to 15 minutes to 30 minutes or longer have been introduced over the last 12 months to 18 months (see sidebar).
Contractors don’t want longer working time at the expense of cure time, however. Many polyaspartic coatings allow foot traffic back within one hour to two hours, but contractors have said that’s not necessary. Two to five hours is fast enough to complete application in one shift while allowing other trades or the project owner back in the area quickly.
Much like a quarterback balances the running versus passing game, working time and return-to-service time are intimately paired and need balance. Change one and the other is likely affected. For that reason, raw material suppliers and formulators run complex patterns to find the one most likely to succeed. With new raw material talent to choose from, formulators are able to combine optimized working time without sacrificing much on the back end of the cure.
Don’t Send Anyone to the Locker Room
Specifiers, contractors, and owners have similarities and differences in the preferred traits of an ideal floor coating, but they all agree on one desirable trait: low odor.
Specifiers and owners typically want low VOC levels and odor for LEED compliance; you want a low-odor option to minimize disruption at the client’s facility during application. If a coating has a high level of solvents, whether they count as a VOC or not, it can off gas and create an odor issue. Solvent odor drifts into other parts of a building, creating an objectionable smell that could force crews to go home.
Coating formulators address the odor issue by minimizing or eliminating solvent content. But this requires tweaking the polyaspartic resin molecule to keep the coating thin enough during application for ideal flow and leveling. Covestro’s new resin addresses this need. It’s much lower in viscosity, a measure of flow or fluidity, than traditional polyaspartic resins, enabling formulators to remove most or all solvents.
A Deep Bench of Talent to Pick From
Finally, early adopters of polyaspartic floor coatings recognized they preferred certain vendors, much like a quarterback might have a preferred wide receiver, because of their success rate with that vendor’s products. Until recently, only a narrow field of players met the multiple criteria of longer working times, preferred return-to-service times, and low odor.
Now you have a broader lineup of players to pick from.
Although polyaspartics have been a great contributor over the years, recent developments from raw material suppliers and formulators have made them an even stronger player in the floor coating team. By listening to your needs and providing new plays, they’ve improved tools to get across the goal line successfully.