Silikal America - Seamless flooring applicators & Seamless flooring manufacturings

If urethane concrete is the better product for your floor surface, why doesn’t it last as long as a Silikal Floor? With soft drinks, side by side taste tests are simple, you blindfold the tester and present any number of products to evaluate and after tasting the selections, a choice is made. Most industrial floors are sold in the same manner, where a quick “taste” test is the extent of the evaluation. At times, the seller might even prefer that you wear a blindfold when making your choice.

Urethane concrete is a likely candidate for a blindfold taste test. On paper, as on the concrete slab, a new Silikal Floor and a urethane concrete floor look favorably comparable to each other. Even a trained eye may have trouble distinguishing one from the other, when everything is unspoiled by use. The true test is how your floor will look after six months, after one or two years or just as importantly after five years.

Where do you begin to evaluate a floor surface? Let’s start at the bottom and work our way up.

The Bond Line
A floor can fail at the bond line for any number of reasons. Poor concrete, poor surface preparation, temperature, moisture or even poor product design. Properly prepared and properly designed urethane concrete will exhibit a tenacious bond to the substrate. However, the difference in product performance will raise its ugly head when the concrete isn’t quite what it is supposed to be or the temperature is not quite what you thought it would be. With a Silikal installation, the installer will perform a bond test before proceeding with the installation. With Silikal, this is a quick operation that can be executed while the surface preparation proceeds and it can be done in as many areas that might exhibit a potential to fail. A bond test won’t guarantee a tenacious bond, good preparation and good product penetration will. Silikal bites deeper into the concrete than urethane concrete and the bond test will demonstrate this immediately, you don’t want your floor to be a bond test.

Cracks
Just a hair above the bond line is another area where Silikal floors perform better than urethane concrete. Concrete moves, concrete cracks. Floor surfaces will generally move and crack with the concrete. Crack isolation membranes are often sold as an added value. With a Silikal floor, a crack isolation membrane is generally required only under severe conditions and can be incorporated into the floor without sacrificing time and extra money. If the crack is so severe that the Silikal floor cracks, the crack generally isolates itself without further degradation, heaving or breaking apart of the floor surface. The standard Silikal Floor is designed with just the right degree of flexibility to accommodate the minor stresses that will cause more rigid systems to crack and eventually crumble.

The Surfacer
Urethane concrete contains water and when water releases, pinholes develop in the concrete. Pinholes can harbor dirt, mold, bacteria and odor. This is the reason topcoats are applied to urethane concrete, which leads us to our final destination.

The Surface
What is on the surface of your urethane concrete? More urethane concrete? An epoxy? A polyurethane? If it is more urethane concrete, then refer to the last section for the problem.
If it is an epoxy, then why are you using urethane concrete? You want your surface to be slip resistant and cleanable. With pinholes and cracks, this becomes an insurmountable chore for any epoxy, polyurethane or other floor than a Silikal floor. Silikal is non porous and textured to the degree required to keep the floor cleanable and slip resistant. With a Silikal floor you do not have to concern yourself with aggregate pop outs that can reduce texture and add another spot to harbor dirt, bacteria and odor.

The System
Silikal is monolithic throughout, from the bond line to the topcoat. It can be installed at temperatures well below freezing and still be returned to service one hour after the last coat is applied. Urethane concrete, epoxy and other polyurethanes still require a minimum of 24 hours and sometimes as much as 3 days to reach a full cure once installed not even taking into account the time required between coats during installation. You cannot wait that long to put your floor into service, so you have no option but to work on the floor when it is not fully cured. This will cause damage to your floor that is initially minute but potentially irreversible. It will be one reason your floor will never look new again.
It is not uncommon for us to ask a customer about their old Silikal Floor and hear the response “It looks as good as the day it was installed.” At Silikal we believe that you should expect more from your floor.

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