Outdoor Concrete Coatings in Pasadena, CA

Almost every outdoor slab we are asked to look at has been painted at least once. Floor paint is the cheap answer to a porch that has gone dull, and outdoors it is the answer that fails soonest: it sits on the surface instead of keying into it, water works under it from the edges, and sun takes the color out of it inside a season or two. A polyaspartic coating is a different article from paint. It goes into the concrete rather than onto it, it is thick enough to take a hosing and a stiff brush, and it does not come away in sheets the way a painted porch does. A patio is the same argument at a larger size, and a Los Angeles patio takes the same polyaspartic build over a slab that moves more.

Which material goes down is settled by the sun. Epoxy is an indoor floor: ultraviolet light breaks its color down, so a slab in direct sun turns yellow and chalky inside a couple of summers. Polyaspartic holds its color under that same light, stays flexible enough for concrete that heats and cools every day, and hardens fast enough that a porch is walkable by the afternoon. Outdoors in Pasadena that settles it more often than not. Why polyaspartic earns its cost outdoors is the whole of the material question, and indoors it is a much closer call.

An outdoor build is polyaspartic from the concrete up. A pigmented polyaspartic base goes onto the prepared slab, flake is broadcast into it before it sets, and a polyaspartic top coat closes the surface over the flake. The flake is doing more work outside than it does indoors: the chip leaves a texture underfoot that keeps its grip once the surface is wet, and on a porch or a set of steps that matters more than the color does. Grip is built into the coat rather than added to it, which is the part of an outdoor specification people only notice in the rain.

Color outdoors gets chosen against the house rather than off a board, because the slab is read next to brick, render and planting instead of under a garage light. Once the polyaspartic is down the concrete stops behaving like concrete. Rain runs off it instead of soaking into it, leaf stain and rust rings lift with a hose, and the winter growth that darkens a north-facing porch has nothing left to root into. It is a surface you wash rather than one you reseal every spring, which is the whole reason a polyaspartic goes down outdoors instead of a paint. Pool surrounds, driveways and the steps between them are coated on the same principle, and what goes down inside the house itself starts from the same prepared slab.

Outside, the work starts with taking off whatever is already on the slab. Old paint and spent sealer come away by grinding rather than by stripper, the concrete is checked for the cracks that open and close with the weather, and anything still moving is cut out and filled before any epoxy or polyaspartic is opened. Only then does the base go down, the flake into it, and the top coat over both. Polyaspartic cures quickly enough that most porches and walkways are back underfoot before the crew has finished loading up.

Price outdoors turns on area and on what is already stuck to the slab, in that order. A porch painted three times takes longer to strip than it takes to coat. After that it is how much of the concrete has to be rebuilt at the edges, whether steps and risers are in the job, and how much of the site has to stay walkable while the work is on. Send us the rough size and a photograph of what is on the concrete now, and we will price the Pasadena outdoor concrete work from that.