The president of this 5,000 student community college discovered a 50-year old, 45,000-square-foot former Sears department store that had been vacant for six years. This was the ideal headquarters for his new Advanced Technology Center (ATC). He could now provide students with the opportunity to earn high school diplomas, college certificates and applied science degrees in information technology, automotive maintenance, welding and CAD-CAM training.

Though structurally sound, the old concrete floor exhibited an inordinate number of non-structural cracks and pits. It also had a lot of surface damage as a result of anchoring temporary partition walls to the concrete with impact tools. Because of settlement, there were construction joints in the concrete that gave the floor unevenness from joint to joint.

Design Engineer Jay Edwards said, “the president did not want flooring that looked like an old garage. It was a formidable challenge to deliver a high-class looking floor that had the structural integrity to withstand the constant impact of heavy machinery, cars, trucks, tools, and corrosive fluids like brake, hydraulic, diesel and gasoline.”

To find the appropriate flooring solution, Edwards turned to Tnemec coating consultant Lane Salvato, who specified a flooring system utilizing coatings from Tnemec’s StrataShield Flooring line. These included a 1⁄4 in. Series 237 PowerTread mortar system because of its outstanding resurfacing power and dense wearing surface properties.

Edwards explained that without the Power-Tread mortar system, the ATC would have been forced to replace the entire concrete floor for three times the expense. Additionally, the application of Series 237 allowed for a floor with a compression strength of more than 12,000 PSI, compared to just 3,000 PSI with a typical concrete floor.