Preventive coating to extend the life of concrete surfaces

How often do we notice them – ugly cracks in our garage floors? It manifests itself as weather and wear and tear-related breaks and crevices on factory and warehouse floors. Even our moderately traversed walkways aren’t safe from breaks and cracks.

Luckily, there’s a solution to dealing with these challenges. And Rust Bullet offers just the product for you. It’s an all-purpose high-performance, high-build, superior protective coating that you can directly apply to concrete surfaces without any acid etching.

Assessing Fitness of Use

But, how do you ensure that a concrete coating, like Rust Bullet® DuraGrade Concrete, is what fits the bill? The answer: Reputable, reliable, repeatable testing!

The best way to confirm whether the concrete protective coating you’ve selected truly makes the grade, is to rely on world-class testing methodologies. Organizations, like ASTM International, have been around for over 120 years, with 12,000+ testing standards used in more than 140 countries. A favorable ASTM test is like an unquestionable seal of approval.

So, how do you know what test results to evaluate?

Well, you check for the typical sources that compromise  coated surfaces, including abrasion, impact, bending and peeling and pull-off. And there are world-recognized testing standards that validate a coating’s abilities to deal with them all:

• Taber Abrasion: This test measures a substances resistance to abrasion. Whether it is abrasion caused by kids roller-skating or vehicles driving on the coated surface, the product must resist any rubbing, scuffing, scraping or erosion
• Impact Resistance: Frequently trafficked coated surfaces, such as garage floors, walkways and paved pathways, receive high amounts of impact daily.  Impact resistance tests evaluate the coating’s ability to prevent cracking of the surfaces as a result of such impacts
• Mandrel Bend: As a result of force on a surface, such as heavy equipment placed on it, or vehicles driven or parked on it, bends may occur that cause the coating to crack or deteriorate. The Mandrel Bend test assesses for such bend-resistance features
• Pull-off Adhesion Bond Strength: Coatings on concrete surfaces are susceptible to pull-off as a result of weak bonding properties. For instance, when hot tires park on a coated garage floor, the heat may cause plugs of the coating to detach. Similarly, when dollies piled with heavy loads rest on a coated surface, moving the dolly may compromise the surface coating

Successfully passing these ASTM tests must be a pre-requisite for any concrete protective coating, whether it’s for industrial, commercial or residential applications. Should a product fail any of these tests for suitability of use, it would be unwise to proceed with an exercise in futility that you are just going to have to recoat in a year or two.

Making the Final Cut

So, how does Rust Bullet® DuraGrade Concrete stack up?

We are proud to say that DuraGrade passed these tests with flying colors – significantly meeting or even exceeding the high ASTM testing standards in some cases. With DuraGrade, there’s no need to use primers, basecoats or topcoats. You can apply the coating directly to the target surface – and you’re done!