Cool, Cool Concrete - Page 3

Concrete benefits

• Beauty: Homeowners love their concrete floors for their personality. Some owners opt for aesthetic simplicity, while others take advantage of the broad choice of colors and textures available.

• Energy efficiency: Concrete floors can help you save energy. They feel cooler in the summer, so there is less of a need to use air conditioning. During the winter, concrete floors absorb the heat from the sun, helping to keep your home warm. For those with radiant-heated floors, concrete is the best flooring surface to maximize heat conduction and minimize energy usage.

• Sustainability: Using concrete floors helps to minimize waste, unlike other types of flooring, such as carpet, which creates waste from padding and carpet scraps. Also, concrete does not contain the harmful VOCs (volatile organic compounds) that many synthetic carpets do.

• Safety: While many smooth flooring surfaces can be slippery, especially when wet, you can add an invisible additive to concrete coatings to provide more traction to the surface.

• Durability: If they are properly installed and maintained, concrete floors rarely need replacement.

• Practicality: Maintenance is simple. Just vacuum or sweep and follow up with a damp mop.

Style options

There's a concrete style for just about any look you're after.

Stains
If you love concrete's innate texture, consider concrete stains. The stain colors permeate the surface to create myriad tones. Depending on the colors and the application techniques, stained concrete can be made to look like natural stone or even wood.

There are two types of concrete stains: reactive and non-reactive. Reactive stains use chemicals that react with the concrete's lime content. Once the chemical reaction takes place, the stain forms a permanent bond with the concrete and won't chip off or peel away. These are the stains to use if you're looking for a translucent or dappled color.

Non-reactive stains are water-based acrylics that penetrate into the surface. They create a more opaque look and are more uniform. You can get stains at your local home improvement store that will run you $2 to $4 per square foot, but often these one-coat stains will chip and peel away after time.

Self-leveling overlays
These concrete coatings have the ability to self-level without troweling, making them ideal for smoothing out worn or uneven concrete surfaces. These overlays can be applied as thin as a credit card (or several inches thick, depending on the look and the application needed) so they won't interfere with doors or thresholds.

A professional will pour or pump the material onto the surface and then use a spreader to distribute it. The overlay can be left seamless or used as a canvas for a variety of designs. You can also amp up the look of overlays by staining or painting them.

Micro-toppings & skim coats
These decorative toppings are applied by a trowel or squeegee in paper-thin layers, which can start as thin as 1/32-inch. You can apply smooth, or apply several coats to create a textured finish. Skimstone is one maker of skim coats.

Some skim-coat and micro-topping systems come pre-tinted in a rainbow of colors, but professionals can also custom-tint them to your specifications. Skim coats are used often by commercial operations to create interesting color-and-pattern interplay.

Although concrete can be colored and textured for so many different looks, concrete specialist Blaine Quillen says most homeowners nowadays opt for some shade of gray. "It doesn't matter if you choose a super-light concrete color or a deeper charcoal, the gray is just a great backdrop for all of their furnishings," he says.

For most homes, says Quillen, resurfacing the concrete takes about five to seven days. While an epoxy coat may run $6 to $8 per square foot, for more complicated overlays (such as Westcott's Liquid Dazzle or Texture-Crete), the prices can range between $5 and $15 per square foot, nearly the same price as quality porcelain tile and stone flooring.

Spray-on systems
If you're looking for more texture, check out the spray-on systems. Using an air-powered hopper gun, these coatings are sprayed evenly onto concrete, but they can also be applied and worked to create a dramatic finish. These techniques are often used for outdoor spaces where more slip resistance is needed, such as walkways, patios, decks, and pool areas.

Think professionally Regardless which of these options you choose, it's important to hire a professional to get the job done right. While concrete stains and some textures can be a do-it-yourself job, the finishes homeowners purchase at a local home-improvement store and apply themselves won't last as long as a professional application.

"Homeowners usually won't take the time or have the know-how to properly prepare the surface, and the color will begin to flake off after a short period of time," says Paul Koury, owner of Westcoat Specialty Coatings Systems, based in San Diego.

"It's important to hire a professional because of the unique application techniques and tools required. Often the artistic aspects of a job require an experienced, skilled craftsman. In addition, there is a learning curve to the processes involved."