Revisit the polished concrete Arapido at Vancouver College

I thought it would be a good time and have a look at an old Arapido project.
Back in 2007 we  had 2 years of successful project testing with this new product and felt it was time to put it to the real test.....the heavy demands of a large boy's college.


Vancouver College Crest

With decorative concrete finishes we had a opportunity to give the College a chance to present their heritage with the present in the new school extensions.

With Bjorn Olner we worked on a concept of deconstructing the school crest and using aspects of it in the new floor.

 Bjorn Olner's original watercolor drawings for the foyer.

We chose gold as the main field color's as it was used in the college's uniforms. The first task was to lay out the design and spray on the Arapido which had a fine combination of Silica hardeners and pearlescent powders broad-casted to provide extra hardness.

Large graphics depicting aspects of the crest and in this case the opening year the school was established 1922. Purple was the predominate color used in the college uniforms.

The school demanding foot traffic has had no effect on the Arapido surface, since its inception in the school another two renovations have seen the material used.

Sprayable Arapido cement micro topping on vertical

Tony from  Melody Concrete mixes the arapido cement with 4.6 liters of CP 2008 polymer for 2 minutes.
Allows it to sit for a couple of minutes ...re-mixes for 45 seconds minute.
He uses a fine screen to pour it through prior to filling the hopper of the Arapido sprayer.

  
Do not mistake this with the Stucco hopper gun system!
that systems spatters the coarse material on with air, and then knocked down with a trowel to give a stucco finish.


The difference:
  The Arapido gun puts on a very smooth fine cement finish without air .....thus having real concrete characteristic.

 Stand back at least 5ft when spraying very light smooth coats

The freshly sprayed Arapido cement is very lightly textured with magic trowels to give movement and a fresco finish...  the desired look.

WALLS AND EVEN CEILINGS

Once dry, Arapido cement takes on a totally different look to paint....a softer warmer natural ascetic

"Its time for a Self-Level"

The problem:
 Even though this surface needed to be level with the adjoining tile, the surface had been so poorly place that it still would have required a self leveling cement like Level 1.
Arapido requires a much smoother substrate.
Remember the newly sprayed cement goes on very thin, and any physical deficiencies underneath would not be hidden.

level 1 brings the concrete floor up to the level of the tile, and at the same time eliminates the heavy trowel lines.
Prior to installing the Arapido over the self level, the floor must be primed with CP2008.
This will stop air movement up through  Level 1, plus bond the two surfaces together and allow the Arapido to hydrate as required.

Laying graphics with different color and matrix

The Process: involves a layer of Arapido, including Cast-on and then polished the following day with 100 mesh dry diamond pads.
Then another layer of sprayed Arapido over a hand cut card board graphic....this time no Cast-on, thus producing more surface contrast. With this second layer, a 200 mesh Diamond pad polished the last graphic even finer then the first layer.




The Project : was completed by Tony Qi from Melody Concrete at  Yaletown Vancouver

A resurfacing installer's nightmare

Bull-nose steps
The original steps were poorly installed with typical gray concrete once the various  deficiencies were patched and ground the Arapido spray pump makes fast work of resurfacing.

Typically resurfacing these 10 bull nose steps would take the best part of an afternoon,with the Arapido sprayer the job was completely resurfaced in 10 minutes not including the patching.


The smooth finish produce by the sprayer had a broadcast of Cast-on to give a fine sandstone appearance to match the visual of the sandstone walls and to create a nonslip factor.

Imagine Joanne's vision

A pretty daunting task at this stage. The old crumbing concrete floor needed to be removed to allow for a complete renovation including raising the house and new foundations.

Joanne inspecting her new Garden suite even at this stage she had visualized the finish needed for her furniture.

A new floor was place the gray concrete was power trowelled to produce a smooth finish ...perfect for the Arpaido process that was done 4 weeks later
the photo gives a glimpse of the abuse a new concrete receives during construction.

COMPLETION: Joanne a very happy client

What makes this interesting is that the white Arapido cement floor with the Terrazzi finish absolutely suits Joannes fine antique furniture in her garden suite.

The Matrix's ...simple yet elegant
The SST Cast-on in the project had a combination of fine silica's, red glass and small white marble chips.

What is an Arapido Sprayer?

Next generation in concrete surfacing 
this airless spray pump was developed for spraying cement based micro resurfacers .
Eliminating many of  problems and difficulties associating with hand tools and the materials used .

5gallon
Removable hopper bucket 
 with finger touch quick release for easy clean up.

Quick release high pressure hose with pressure gauge.

The high volume gun 












Every installers dream

• Smaller team required (2 men ) even on large projects
• Faster resurfacing over horizontal and vertical surfaces
• Eliminates nasty trowel marks
• Reduced material costs
• Increases the number of finishes possible 
• Magical when it comes to stairs and those difficult areas.
• OFF YOUR KNEES

Completing the project

The problem:  the exterior pool deck was poured at different times during construction, resulting in two totally different colored concrete slabs with differing porosity's. Staining these concrete pours, trying to pull them together was fruitless .Finally the customer got what they wanted Arapido sprayed over entire surface.

A combination of  aggregates  were cast on during the installation of the Arapido to give the surface a nonslip sandstone finish.

A elegant sutle yet practical color and finish for this exterior application.

Floating dyes on Arapido cement

A river of colors

The new Arapido cement surface has a dye process executed using blue first followed by yellow,  then red, and finally black.....

The following day, torn cardboard strip protects the surface, and then another layer of integrally colored Arapido cement sprayed either side.

Beautiful natural colors


The beautiful organic result obtained using translucent  Deso cement dyes on Arapido cement.


Using sawdust resist to manipulate and protect the primary colors during the process creating a mysterious depth.


It was critical to avoid contaminating the blue areas during the process, as we all know any yellow would have turned it to green.

a color wash
with maple leaves imprinted into the wet Arapido cement
creating an interesting interaction between the cement, dye colors and the imprinted leaves.




The different color layers suggest depth, which is further enhanced by the color gradients in the individual layers.  

Vancouver Room 8 -white Arapido

 

standard gray concrete pour

It was decided not to use white color-hardener for finishing the concrete, this would have been too difficult to protect with all the heavy construction in progress.The building was also very old and had a lot of oil contamination in the adjoining spaces which would have ruined the white concrete finish.

The final decision was to apply Arapido just prior to opening.

Spraying on new white Arapido cement surface

          

White Arapido was the choose, as it would equal the ascetic's attained with white cement and could be applied at the end of construction, eliminating the need for protection.

Sealed finished surface

Martha Stewart.. newly renovated 30,000 sqft. addition

New York gallery district

The Arapido is applied over an old repaired  self-leveled concrete floor to complete the renovation.
  The following day the new floor was sanded with 120 mesh screens.
The final floor showed no cold joints, even though the runs where over a 100 ft. long .
Keeping a wet edge is not a problem with Arapido,
and the sprayer eliminates those unsightly trowel and smoother lines.

San Francisco Terrazzi

The new custom colored  surface was applied with an Arapido spray pump.....take note how the surrounding masking should be at least three feet to eliminate any over-spray.

Arapido over stamped concrete

The latest in decorative concrete resurfacing... With the Arapido sprayer, now its possible to resurface existing stamped concrete... without loosing the original textured profile.