The European Village Resort was under construction when the developer, Peter Roehr, attended World of Concrete 2004 in Orlando. There he met Glenn Davis, president of ArcusStone Distributors, and discovered the limestone coatings developed by ArcusStone Products. Roehr's European Village had three four-story buildings that included retail and condominium space with underground parking. The old-world architecture that gave the “removable form” concrete buildings such character needed a European limestone and masonry finish. Roehr found products from a single source that coated concrete to create limestone stucco or stone ornamentation, and which could be cast into forms or used to coat three-dimensional expanded polystyrene.
Roehr already had plastering contractor ZMR Stucco, Jacksonville, Fla., working on the project, but ArcusStone was new to them. However, ArcusStone Distributors were able to train the applicators onsite, fast-track the materials, match custom colors, and provide both casting and ornamental manufacturing companies to service the contract.
ArcusStone limestone plaster contains limestone fines and various polymers. The concrete walls at the European Village were first primed with Arcusbonder before the custom-colored Arcusplaster was troweled onto the concrete. Work began at the 4th level and proceeded downward. Where wood was found around windows or EPS architectural shapes over windows, a base coat with embedded mesh, exterior insulated finishing system (EIFS), or a scratch coat was applied over wire mesh before the plaster layer.
ArcusStonecoat, a stone-emulating product that can be carved, is similar to the plaster but contains larger fines. The running bond limestone block at the retail shop level was applied with ArcusStonecoat and carved into 16x24x10-inch pieces. The coating process followed the same application method—first applying a primer over concrete, or if coating other substrates, using the mesh and brown coat preparation. ArcusStone Champaign pigment colored the stone block in three different shades: as a base color, to antique, and to grout the running bond pattern.
Many concrete columns were cast as oblong shapes and had to be made round. Workers cut radius sections of EPS and adhered them to the precast columns, altering the shape.
A different process was used on the wood facade of the retail buildings. The facades were first framed and installed with wire lathe before being coated with the scratch and brown coat. Again the bond coat was applied, followed by the application of either Arcusplaster or ArcusStonecoat.
The ArcusStone products on the project were sealed with a product from Professional Products of Kansas, which waterproofs and penetrates, and contains UV protection. “What the owners really liked was using a product that had such flexibility. They saved time and money, and achieved their objective—a beautiful European Village,” says Davis.