School exteriors get a facelift with concrete repairs

One Internet source states that there are 16,433 elementary and secondary schools in Canada. The database shows that 2,327 of those schools are in British Columbia, 2,106 are in Alberta and 762 are in Saskatchewan. As the school year moves from spring to summer, school facilities managers prepare to make those exterior repairs that help their institutions retain a well-maintained look. The following examples show how a school and a school board facility each gave a new shine to their facilities by making concrete repairs.

Surrey School Board – Surrey, British Columbia

The challenge with this project was to make the staircase, from street level to the first floor at the building

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Surrey School Board - front steps.

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entrance, look like new by adding a thin layer of concrete topping rather than removing and replacing the entire concrete staircase.

The staircase was approximately 30 years old and was very worn and tired looking. The cement paste on the surface had long since eroded away, leaving the aggregate exposed in many areas of the staircase. A number of the stair nosings had chunks missing as well. The entire staircase was first pressure-washed to remove any laitance, dirt and loose aggregate. Once the concrete was dry, the repair work began.

In total, it took only three days to repair the staircase.

The stair nosings were repaired with Planitop X repair mortar due to its ease of application, compressive strength and bond strength. Mapecem Quickpatch was then applied to all the surface areas that required patching and skimming, so that any imperfections in the concrete substrate would not show through into the finish coat.

The contractor had worked with Mapecem Quickpatch on many horizontal applications, but had not used it on vertical surfaces before; he was very pleased with how well it performed on the vertical risers of the stairs. The fluidity of the product made it very easy to apply on all of the surfaces.

The final finish was obtained using Concrete Renew, which was poured onto the concrete, then troweled into the surface. Next it was smoothed off with a Magic Trowel (squeegee-type trowel), and finished with a broom to give it a textured surface. After that, the repair work was covered with an acrylic sealer to give lasting protection.

In total, it took only three days to repair the staircase; the pressure washing was done on Day 1, the concrete repair work on Day 2, and the sealing was completed on Day 3.

Ecole St. Jean de la Lande –Montreal, Quebec

Ecole St. Jean de la Lande is a primary school in the city of Montreal, built in the late-1920s/early-1930s. When it was time for a facelift, the school wanted to maintain its original look, so the City of Montreal decided to renew the concrete walls of the exterior. However, the first product the engineers specified posed a number of problems in application, resulting in cracks in many places on the façade.

Soconex, the specialty concrete restoration contractor who was working on the job, turned to MAPEI for advice. After viewing the jobsite, concrete restoration systems representative Michel Lafortune recommended that they use Planitop X – a fast, versatile, user-friendly, economical trowelapplied mortar with high early strength that would solve the problem of cracking. Soconex performed a mock-up of the repair in a small area, and the architects and engineers from the city approved Planitop X for the restoration.

The Soconex team first removed the old concrete and did a saw-cut of the perimeter to determine where the concrete was loose. To prevent corrosion of underlying metal, they applied Mapefer 1K to the entire surface; then they wet the concrete walls for 24 hours before they installed Planitop X over the old concrete with trowels. Next, they put a polyurethane plastic sheet over the repairs to let them cure for 24 hours. After removing the plastic, they painted the walls with an exterior coating. Soconex liked the results obtained with Planitop X so much that they are now using it extensively now for concrete repairs.

For further information, please visit www.mapei.com/CA-EN/.