You are here:      Home / Blog

Blog

Decorative Concrete Sealer Stripper Selection Guide

Restore Decorative Concrete with Sealer StripperThe weather is warming up and it’s time to take a good look at your client’s pool deck, backyard patio, outdoor walkway or other exterior textured/stamped concrete. Is the decorative concrete acrylic sealer faded, chalky, yellowed or worn out? Don’t reapply another layer of sealer – or you’ll risk bubbling, peeling and blistering. Strip the sealer first, then apply a fresh coat of acrylic sealer for beautiful results.

Nox-Crete Sealer Strippers Are Safe and Effective

In the past, removing acrylic from concrete required the use of hazardous solvents like xylene. The solvents used in traditional strippers (xylene, toluene and mineral spirits) are considered hazardous by the EPA and OSHA. Any spent residue resulting from the use of these solvents is strictly regulated and must be disposed of through a licensed disposal facility.

Xylene is flammable, and causes skin irritation. Inhaling xylene vapor causes acute symptoms such as: headache, dizziness, nausea and vomiting. Long-term exposure may lead to headaches, irritability, depression, insomnia, agitation, extreme tiredness, tremors, impaired concentration and short-term memory loss.

Decorative Concrete Sealer StripperTo combat the use of these hazardous solvents, Nox-Crete’s chemists combine a proprietary blend of biodegradable and environmentally-friendly solvents and surfactants. Nox-Crete’s decorative concrete sealer strippers are xylene-free and safe to use. The solvents used in Nox-Crete’s decorative concrete sealer strippers are 100% biodegradable, nonhazardous by EPA definition and are safe for disposal in any storm water or sanitary sewer system.

How To Choose The Right Sealer Stripper

Decorative Concrete Sealer StripperDeco-Strip

The powerful, biodegradable coating stripper penetrates and softens decorative concrete acrylic sealers. Deco-Strip can be removed with a power washer to restore decorative concrete back to its original unsealed condition. Use a scrubbing machine to speed the stripping process of multiple layers of decorative concrete sealer.

Applications:

  • Large areas
  • When you have time to wait for concrete to dry after power washing
  • In areas where you can push acrylic residue into grass or street
  • When you need to remove multiple layers of sealers

Advantages:

  • Long working time
  • Can use scrubbing machine to speed stripping process
  • One-application to take sealers off

Tips/Tricks:

  • Acrylic resin becomes a stringy/sticky bubble gum-consistency blob during pressure-wash
  • Push the old sealer into a “rope” line in collection area
  • Shovel/scoop larger accumulations of old sealer and disposed of in trash receptacle

Deco-Peel

Deco-Peel is a two-part system, which includes 5 gallons of stripper and an engineered fabric blanket which covers 400 square feet. The blanket is cut to fit around curves, corners and hard-to-reach areas; then saturated with the stripper. The acrylic resin is absorbed and dries into the fabric blanket, which can then be peeled up and thrown away. The margin of error in application is greatly reduced with this simple system.

Applications:

  • Decorative stamped concrete areas around sensitive landscaping, sides of homes or pools that are susceptible to splatter damage
  • When it’s not expedient to use rental equipment, such as a power washer

Advantages:

  • Fast-acting – less than two hours
  • No need to wash concrete after stripping process is complete
  • Easy to use

Clean Line Reveal at World of Concrete 2017

The Nox-Crete team is on the road in 2017! Join us in South Hall booth S11439 to learn more about Clean Line Reveal - an innovative and cost effective reveal/rustication product designed to maximize the architectural aesthetics of buildings using tilt-up and/or pre-cast construction techniques.

Extruded using high density PVC, Clean Line Reveal offers the following advantages:

  • Lightweight and durable – Clean Line Reveal is a fraction of the weight of typical wood reveals and provides unique durability to construction traffic due to its composite “strut” design.  High Density PVC material and white color make it largely unaffected by climatic changes.
  • Easy Installation – Clean Line Reveal is installed using a custom formulated adhesive to maximize adhesion between a cured concrete casting slab and Clean Line Reveal.  No more time consuming drilling and fastening of wood reveals to floor slab, resulting in a floor slab requiring unsightly patchwork repairs.
  • Clean Release – Clean Line Reveals maintain their extruded dimensions, regardless of climatic conditions and remain on the floor when tilt panels are lifted, thereby eliminating costly rental equipment and “sack & patch” work to the panel face.  The more conventional wood reveals are susceptible to moisture swelling and can leach sugars aucasinosonline.com/ca/ onto the concrete panel face, resulting in discoloration of the panel face and the wood reveal “stuck in the tilt-up panel”.
  • Cost Savings – Installed cost of Clean Line Reveal provides significant cost savings by reducing labor and equipment rentals through its ease of handling, clean release, and minimization of wall and floor slab repairs.
  • Premium Architectural Aesthetics –Sharp lines from an extruded profile ensure consistency in appearance and cleanness of lines.  Multiple profiles available to satisfy your imagination.

We'll have a display of Clean Line Reveal at our World of Concrete booth. See you in Vegas!

Chembeton Gives Customers What They Want: an Economical, High-Quality Release Agent

End users and distributors alike want best-in-class release agents, but they want them at a lower cost. Over the past 60 years, Nox-Crete has learned a thing or two about manufacturing best-in-class chemical solutions to concrete problems.

Eric Leone’s form release agent experiment on his wood chip plant project produced two walls with a more consistent and purer color than the first wall. The two walls in the foreground used Nox-Crete’s Chembeton form release agent. *Photo courtesy of Rob Wagner, Nox-Crete Northeast Regional Sales Manager

Chembeton provides a crisp, positive release, along with a cleaner, smoother appearance than competing release agents. Chembeton was used on the two panels in the foreground.

What you might not know is that our family of release agents features high-performance products at all price points—including Chembeton.

Providing the greatest value and a high level of performance, Chembeton is ideal for plywood-faced handset forms, B-B plywood, steel and aluminum, and forms previously treated with form oil.

Chembeton is a hybrid form release agent that combines both chemically active and barrier-type release properties for a crisp, positive release. Its petroleum-based formulation also allows for easy spraying in cold weather.

Chembeton provides many advantages, including:

  • Dries fast
  • Resists wash-off
  • Mild odor
  • Can be applied up to three weeks before concrete pour
  • Is ready to use, no dilution required
  • Provides a crisp, positive release
  • Reduces cleaning and maintenance costs–forms become self-cleaning with continued use
  • Resists removal by foot traffic and rain
  • Can be used on forms that have been previously treated with competitive form oils
  • One grade for year-round sprayability
  • Surpasses performance requirements of US Army Corps of Engineers, GSA and Bureau of Reclamation specifications for nonstaining form oil
  • Meets all federal, state and Canadian VOC requirements (excludes SCAQMD of California)

Learn more about how Chembeton is right for you by contacting Nox-Crete's customer service team at 402.341.2080 and by reading the product data sheet.

Properly Removing Bondbreaker from Concrete Can Help Cut Potential of Tilt-Up Floor Sweating

by Craig Coppersmith, P.E., VP Technical Sales & Marketing

Nox-Crete strives to create the highest quality chemicals for the concrete industry, and to consult with architects, engineers, contractors and distributors regarding the use of our products and their impact on the maintenance of concrete. Our goal is to ensure that those products enhance both the performance and appearance of concrete floors.

Recently, there has been much discussion in the concrete construction industry regarding the phenomenon of sweating floor slabs (commonly referred to as Sweating Slab Syndrome) in warehouses and distribution centers. There are multiple factors that have been suggested to contribute to Sweating Slab Syndrome, including trace amounts of reactive bondbreaker that may remain on floors in casting areas.

Understanding and sharing in the concerns about Sweating Slab Syndrome, the Nox-Crete team set out to verify that our Silcoseal Cure and Bondbreaker could be effectively removed from a tilt-up floor following our standard recommendations for removal, which is cited in our product data sheets. This would validate our recommended processes for removal of Silcoseal Cure and Bondbreaker and eliminate it as a possible contributor to the Sweating Slab Syndrome, by virtue of a proven method for its removal.

To demonstrate that Silcoseal Cure and Bondbreaker testing, sweating slab, bondbreakercould be effectively removed, Nox-Crete contracted with Nelson Testing Laboratories (NTL)—an independent, certified testing agency—to perform a mock tilt-up using Silcoseal Cure and Bondbreaker and Nox-Crete’s citrus-based stripper, Bio-Clean Concentrate CPC, for the removal.

Analysis Process
NTL mixed and poured concrete into a 9-foot x 4-foot x 2-inch thick mold. The concrete surface was finished with a steel trowel and coated with two coats of Silcoseal Cure and Bondbreaker, applied at 400 sf/gallon, 24 hours apart. After another 24 hours, a concrete wall panel was cast on top of the original concrete specimen. After another 48 hours, the wall panel was separated from the original concrete specimen.

The exposed face of the concrete casting surface was then sectioned into three equal parts: uncleaned; cleaned with Bio-Clean diluted 1:3 with water; and cleaned with Bio-Clean diluted 1:5 with water.

The uncleaned sample was left untouched. The area cleaned with Bio-Clean diluted 1:3 was stripped with a 1:3 ratio of Bio-Clean Concentrate CPC to water solution, using a nylon scrub brush simulating a downward force of 100 pounds. The area cleaned with Bio-Clean diluted 1:5 was stripped with a 1:5 ratio of Bio-Clean Concentrate CPC to water solution, using a nylon scrub brush simulating a downward force of 100 pounds.

Four 50-gram samples were then extracted from the concrete casting surface—plain concrete; concrete exposed to Silcoseal Cure and Bondbreaker but not stripped with the Bio-Clean solution; concrete exposed to Silcoseal Cure and Bondbreaker and stripped with the 1:3 Bio-Clean solution; and concrete exposed to Silcoseal Cure and Bondbreaker and stripped with the 1:5 Bio-Clean solution.

Methods of Analysis
The four pulverized concrete samples were chemically extracted with η-hexane. To remove all organic substances, 50 grams per each of the four samples were extracted.

The liquid extract from each of the four concrete samples and the liquid samples of the Silcoseal Cure and Bondbreaker and Bio-Clean Concentrate CPC were dried on a universal diamond Attenuated Total Reflectance Accessory (ATR) for Infrared Spectroscopy, then analyzed using a Perkin Elmer Spectrum Model One Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) Spectrometer, with a configuration of resolution of 4 cm-1 and eight accumulations (number of scans) per sample.

Samples Received for Analysis
Six samples were analyzed:
A)   Bio-Clean Concentrate CPC (liquid sample)
B)   Silcoseal Cure and Bondbreaker (liquid sample)
C)   Plain concrete not exposed to Silcoseal (50 g. sample – pulverized concrete)
D)   Concrete exposed to Silcoseal, not cleaned (50 g. sample – pulverized concrete)
E)   Concrete exposed to Silcoseal, stripped with 1:3 ratio of Bio-Clean Concentrate CPC to water (50 g. sample – pulverized concrete)
F)   Concrete exposed to Silcoseal, stripped with 1:5 ratio of Bio-Clean Concentrate CPC to water (50 g. sample – pulverized concrete)

Extraction and Infrared Spectroscopy Analysis Results
Evidence of the presence of Silcoseal Cure and Bondbreaker was not found in three of the pulverized concrete samples (Samples C, E & F). However, Sample D, the pulverized concrete that was exposed to Silcoseal but not cleaned, contained a detectable amount of organic extract, indicating the presence of Silcoseal─as expected.

Both of the stripping solution ratios (1:3 and 1:5) of Bio-Clean Concentrate CPC to water effectively removed the Silcoseal Cure and Bondbreaker.

The infrared spectra of both of the extracts from Samples E & F show a sharp absorption band around 1100 cm-1 (frequency), which is due to the presence of the Bio-Clean. Organic substances from the Silcoseal Cure and Bondbreaker are not evident in the spectra of Samples C, E & F, but are evident in Sample D.

Summary: Nox-Crete’s Interpretation of the Analysis Results
Proper surface preparation will remove all trace amounts of Silcoseal Cure and Bondbreaker and its heavy metallic soaps from concrete tilt-up floors. If no Silcoseal Cure and Bondbreaker residue remains on the tilt-up floor, it cannot contribute to Sweating Slab Syndrome.

NOTE: NOTE: These independent tests were only conducted on Nox-Crete-branded products. It is unknown whether other brands of reactive bondbreakers can be successfully removed.These independent tests were only conducted on Nox-Crete-branded products. It is unknown whether other brands of reactive bondbreakers can be successfully removed.

The most effective way to remove Silcoseal Cure and Bondbreaker residue is with Nox-Crete’s Bio-Clean Concentrate CPC. Nox-Crete recommends taking these steps to remove bondbreaker residue from concrete floors:

  • Dilute Bio-Clean Concentrate CPC 1:1 with water for stripping heavy coatings. For removal of lighter coatings,dilute with a ratio of 1:3.
  • Uniformly apply by sprayer or through an automatic floor machine at an application rate of 200-300 sf/gal (5-7.5 sm/L).
  • Allow product to dwell on the floor surface for 20-30 minutes while aggressively scrubbing the surface with an automatic floor machine equipped with nylon scrub brushes.
  • Squeegee the surface clean and rinse thoroughly with water.

Follow these links to learn more about Nox-Crete's line of Silcoseal Cure and Bondbreakers and Bio-Clean Concentrate CPC, or call our customer service team at 402-341-2080.