CASE HISTORY:
The concrete renovation and waterproofing project located at Miami Florida’s Seaquarium presented many problems, but down time and loss of revenue was the major concern. After a lengthy evaluation of materials and systems currently available, the maintenance staff at Seaquarium decided to go with a total Polyurea system, manufactured by Elastomer Specialties, Inc. because of the product's color stability, long term durability and rapid cure time. Due to their extensive background in specialty coating applications, ESI-Certified contractor Rick Bennett, Inc. was chosen for the job. 40 years of salt water corrosion on the concrete and steel surfaces in a costal environment had taken its toll on this structure. However, the 1st 5 rows of the grandstands appeared to be the worst. These rows received a massive amount of water from the killer whale as it was trained to splash the audience during each of the daily shows.
MATERIAL:
INSTALLATION:
The initial phase of the job was to remove all the metal bench seats and brackets from the grandstands and then chip out all loose and damaged concrete. Once this had been done the rebar was epoxy coated and a rapid set concrete mix was used to reface all of the concrete sections.
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Next the entire surface area was hydro blasted in order to remove concrete dust and debris.
The first part of the actual installation procedure called for priming the concrete. The product specified was PoxyPrime H20, a water based epoxy primer manufactured by ESI.
The primer was installed using an airless sprayer in accordance with the manufactures specifications. It should be noted that because the overall size of the project, 18,000 SF in total, the project had to be broken down into 6 separate sections.
Once the primer was applied in each section, the contractor then sprayed ElastoGard ARC polyurea through a Gusmer 2035 high-pressure plural component pump at approximately 60 mils.
The product used for the final topcoat was PolySpar HP a color stable polyaspartic polyurea that was first rolled down at approximately 7 mils followed up by spraying the final coat at 7-10 mils.
The total coating system once complete was between 75-85 mils, dry film thickness.
The actual project called for three separate colors, Safety Yellow, Aqua Blue and Gray. As each section was completed the new bench seats were re-installed and coated. All the heavy walking areas, and stairways received a coat of fine aggregate to create a non-skid surface. Once the coating was completed Rick Bennett, Inc. installed new handrails, which were also coated with PolySpar HP Safety Yellow.
The Killer Whale tank received a coat of PolySpar HP Aqua Blue about 4 feet down from the top to replace the coating that had to be removed while replacing the acrylic plastic viewing windows.
Elastomer Specialties, Inc. previously provided Miami Seaquarium with a special formulation for coating their mammal holding tanks.
Once the project was completed, the Miami Seaquarium purchased a Condor low-pressure pump for their own maintenance personnel to install ESI, rapid curing coatings on small applications such as walkways, mezzanines or areas requiring emergency repairs.
The entire project was completed in October 2002, and took approximately 18 days to finish.
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