Founded in March 1966, Des Moines Area Community College (DMACC), has six campus locations in the state of Iowa. The two-year institution received approval to construct a new recreation facility on their Ankeny campus in 2015. DMACC’s Ankeny campus annually serves more than 15,600 students, most of which were excited for the new facility to become one of the focal points of the campus.
In 2016, RDG Planning & Design of Des Moines was selected as the architect for the project, noted Rory Sudbeck, local Tnemec representative with SGA Coating Consultants, Inc. “The architect came to us with this project because we have done several sports and recreation facilities with them,” stated Sudbeck.
Tnemec coatings were specified for several segments of DMACC’s rec center, starting with three coats of Tnemec’s Series 66 Hi-Build Epoxoline in the facility’s swimming pool. Series 66 has long been the industry-standard polyamide epoxy coating and is well known for its forgiving application characteristics in adverse and varied conditions like water immersion.
In addition to the pool coatings, the project called for Series 104 H.S. Epoxy on interior walls, Series 115 Uni-Bond DF on the ceiling, Series 607 Conformal Stain on exterior precast walls and Series 740 UVX on the exterior metals.
“The architect was also concerned with thermal bridging and condensation within the building envelope,“ explained Sudbeck. “The warm interior of the building would likely create condensation problems, especially in the winter months.”
Tnemec’s innovative fluid-applied insulating coating, Series 971 Aerolon Acrylic, was utilized as a non-structural thermal break. Aerolon is part of a durable, corrosionresistant coating system that bonds to the substrate, mitigating thermal bridging and controlling condensation. This product was applied to all interior-to-exterior incursions at 40-50 mils dry film thickness (DFT) per coat.
In the end, over 800 gallons of Tnemec coatings were utilized on the DMACC Ankeny Recreation Center. The project was completed in March 2017 and is currently open to all students and staff.