Outdoor Concrete Coatings in Glendale, CA

Look at any outdoor flight that has been down a few years and the wear is not spread evenly across it. It sits in a band along the front of each tread, an inch or two deep. That edge takes the whole of every footfall, it is the thinnest concrete in the pour, and it is where rain leaves the step rather than stands on it. Paint gives out there first, and so does a sealer, and so does an epoxy that should never have gone outdoors, because each of them stops at the edge instead of turning it. A polyaspartic coat is worked around the nosing rather than up to it. Once the front of a nosing has gone the rest follows quickly, as water works in behind what is left and lifts it back across the tread. A flight is also mostly edge: a dozen treads and risers carry many times the exposed edge of a patio covering the same ground, and edges are where any coating is tested. A patio is the gentler version of the same argument over a bigger and flatter slab.

Which material goes down outdoors is barely a choice. Epoxy is an indoor floor, because ultraviolet light breaks its color down and a slab in open sun goes yellow and chalky inside a couple of summers. Polyaspartic holds its color under that same light, and more to the point on a step it stays flexible while the concrete beneath it heats and cools through the day, so the polyaspartic moves with the nosing instead of cracking away from it. It also lays thin enough to wrap an edge properly rather than build a lip against it. The case for polyaspartic on outdoor concrete rests on those two things before it rests on color.

An outdoor build is polyaspartic the whole way up. A pigmented polyaspartic base goes onto the prepared concrete, flake is broadcast into that polyaspartic before it sets, and a polyaspartic top coat closes over the flake. Outdoors the flake earns its place twice over: it hides the marks a working entrance collects, and the texture it leaves is what holds your foot on a wet tread. On a flight the base is worked over the nosing and down the riser as one surface, so there is no join at the edge for water to find. The grip is in the polyaspartic itself rather than brushed on after it.

Color outdoors is chosen against the house rather than off a board, because a porch is read next to brick, render and planting and not under a garage light. Once the polyaspartic is down the concrete stops behaving like concrete. Rain runs off it, leaf stain and rust rings lift with a hose, and the green that darkens a shaded flight through the winter has nothing left to root into. A polyaspartic surface is one you wash, not one you reseal every spring. Driveways, pool surrounds and the paths that join them are coated on the same principle, what goes down inside the house starts from the same prepared slab, and a Glendale garage floor is built heavier again.

Outside, the work begins by taking off whatever is already on the concrete. Old paint and dead sealer come off by grinding, not by stripper, the slab is checked for the cracks that open and close with the weather, and anything still moving is cut out and filled before any polyaspartic is opened. Steps are ground by hand at the nosings, which is slower than it looks and is the part that decides how the finished flight reads. Polyaspartic cures quickly enough that most porches and walkways are back underfoot before the crew has finished loading up.

Price outdoors turns on area first and on what is already stuck to the concrete second. A porch that has been painted three times takes longer to get back to bare than it takes to coat. After that it is how many steps are in the run, because a flight is far more work per square foot than the walkway leading up to it, how much concrete has to be rebuilt at the edges, and how much of the route has to stay walkable while the work is on. Outdoor polyaspartic work in Glendale generally runs between $5 and $7 per square foot. Epoxy Surface Professionals hold a 5.0 rating from 120+ reviews, and the book is usually a couple of weeks deep. Send the rough size, and a photograph that shows the steps, through the quote form or on (818) 359-3932, and we will work the number from that.