Urethane Cement Flooring for South Florida Plants

What it is

Urethane cement, urethane mortar, polyurethane cement

Three names, one category. Some manufacturers call it urethane mortar, some call it polyurethane cement or PU cement, and most of the trade just says urethane cement. What all of them describe is a four component system: a resin, a hardener, a graded powder and a pigment pack, mixed whole and placed like a screed rather than rolled like a coating.

That is the whole difference in one line. An epoxy floor is a film sitting on concrete. A urethane cement floor is a thin layer of a different concrete, bonded to the slab and moving at close to the same rate as it. That is why it survives heat and cold that lift epoxy off the slab.

Side by side

Urethane cement versus epoxy

The urethane cement column is the published manufacturer data for PPC Krete Slurry SL, the self leveling system we stock. The epoxy column describes a typical 100% solids build coat.

Epoxy versus polyaspartic →

Choosing

When you need it, and when epoxy is enough

Why it survives

Thermal shock and wash down

Thermal shock is a bonding problem, not a hardness problem. A thin film epoxy at ten to twenty mils expands at a very different rate to the concrete under it, so a steam hose across a cold slab loads the bond line until the film lets go. Urethane cement placed at 1/8 to 3/16 inch behaves close enough to the slab that it stays put. PPC rates Krete Slurry SL for service from 26.5F to 185F and lists it as temperature and thermal shock resistant.

Wash down is the other half. The slurry is published at 0% water absorption, which is why rinse water and condensate do not get into the surface and sit. The system terminates into a saw cut keyway at every drain and turns up the wall as a cove, so there is no flat seam at the wall base. That detailing is what makes a wash down floor last, and it is where failed floors always fail first.

Be careful with the slip numbers. The data sheet lists a pendulum slip test result of 70 dry and 25 wet for the smooth finish. A smooth urethane cement floor is not a wet area floor on its own. Anywhere the floor is wet underfoot, the silica broadcast is part of the system, not an upgrade.

The cold end

Coolers, freezers and what the numbers actually say

Two different statements sit in the PPC literature and they get confused constantly, so here they are separately.

• Service range. PPC publishes 26.5F to 185F. That covers coolers, chill rooms, produce rooms, refrigerated processing and refrigerated docks, which is most cold storage work in South Florida.
• Freeze thaw testing. The data sheet separately states the system has been tested for thermal cycling and freeze thaw performance to ASTM C666, and that it holds adhesion, compressive strength and impact resistance down to minus 40F, provided the substrate can also take it and provided the room is cooled down gradually over at least 24 hours.

Those are not the same claim, and a deep freeze room is not something to settle off a web page. Tell us the holding temperature and the pull down procedure, and we will take the real room conditions to the manufacturer and come back with a written answer. That is a slower reply and a better floor.

The build

Thickness and what each layer is for

• Shotblast to CSP 2 to 3. Totally enclosed shotblasting or scarification, to an open textured surface like 30 grit sandpaper. Deeper than a grind and not optional. Old quarry tile, thinset and failed coatings come off first. A primer may be needed over a porous substrate, so ask the rep.
• Slurry at 1/8 inch. The standard build for coolers, prep rooms, restrooms, locker rooms and light process areas. Smooth matte, seamless, no crevices for soil to sit in.
• Slurry at 3/16 inch. The heavier build for cook rooms, brewhouses, cellars and anywhere taking point impact from kegs, carts and dropped tooling alongside the thermal cycling.
• Silica broadcast at about 0.4 lb per sq ft. Scattered into the wet surface wherever the floor runs wet. See the slip numbers above.
• Topcoat. PPC Krete Urethane Cement Topcoat seals the floor smooth matte or locks in the broadcast. Place it within 24 hours of the slurry and no preparation is needed. Past 24 hours it has to be diamond ground first.
• Cove base and drain keyways. Not an extra line item. On a wash down floor this is the part that decides whether the floor lasts.

Heavier trowel applied mortar builds exist for more extreme thermal shock. We do not hold them on the shelf, so if a room needs one, tell the rep the conditions and we will source it rather than talk you into the system we happen to stock. Quantities change with thickness and with how much cove and detail work a room carries, so work them from the coverage guide and the technical data sheets rather than a square foot rule of thumb.

Budget

What it costs, and why it costs that

Urethane cement lands several times higher than an epoxy floor per square foot, and almost none of the difference is margin. Three things drive it.

• Material volume. You are placing 1/8 to 3/16 inch of mortar, not 10 to 20 mils of film. That is an order of magnitude more material over the same slab.
• Prep. Enclosed shotblasting to CSP 2 to 3 with HEPA extraction costs more than a grind, and in a food plant the containment is contamination control, not housekeeping.
• Labor and downtime. Whole kits, a 23 to 27 minute working window, bay by bay placement with a mixer, a screed rake, a notched trowel and a spiked roller, plus drain reset and cove work.

Set against that, the epoxy floor you patch around the drains every other year is not the cheaper floor. We price these by the job, off the square footage, the room conditions and the shutdown window, not off a chart. PPC also asks for a 100 to 200 sq ft mockup to be installed and approved for slip resistance and appearance before the real floor goes down, so build that into the schedule and the budget.

Installation

This is not a DIY system

We say that plainly, and the working window is why. Pot life on the topcoat is 15 minutes at 75F and working time is 23 to 27 minutes at 72F, and the kit is mixed whole. You cannot split a kit, you cannot proportion one and you cannot stop halfway. A crew places it in bays, someone is always mixing the next kit while the last one is still moving, and the data sheet marks the material as intended for industrial use only.

Return to service figures are the manufacturer numbers at 72F. Krete Slurry SL takes foot traffic in 12 hours, heavy traffic in 24 hours, and reaches full chemical cure in 5 days. The topcoat takes light foot traffic in 24 hours and reaches full chemical cure in 7 days. Do not place below 50F, and keep the floor above 40F for the first 24 hours. Hold full strength caustic sanitation off the floor until the chemical cure time has passed, even though it will carry traffic long before then.

Latux is a supplier and an installer. If you have a trained crew, we supply the material and the prep equipment and we will walk the detailing with you. If you do not, we install it.

What we stock

PPC Krete urethane cement systems

These are quoted, not sold from the cart. The number depends on square footage, color, freight and lead time, so a rep prices the job rather than the pail.

• All urethane cement systems
• Technical data sheets
• Commercial and industrial flooring
• Coverage guide

PPC's published limited warranty runs 12 months on material properly installed over a sound, properly prepared substrate, and the remedy is replacement of the defective portion of the product.

A note on wording

Food and beverage claims

We keep this plain because it matters at audit time. The Krete slurry and topcoat product pages state that both are antimicrobial and that both meet requirements for indirect food contact, and PPC's data sheets name the antimicrobial standard as JIS Z 2801:2000. Those are the manufacturer's own statements and the numbers behind them.

What we will not do is describe a floor as carrying an agency status, because no government programme signs off a floor coating. If your sanitation plan, your third party auditor or a customer questionnaire needs documentation, ask us and we will send the manufacturer data sheets so your quality team reads the source. That is the answer that survives an audit.

By room

Where this floor goes to work

• Brewery and distillery floors
• Food plant wash down floors
• Cold storage and freezer floors
• Commercial kitchen flooring