hello and welcome I'm Tom Fischer with fish stone thanks for joining us today if you're a concrete professional you understand the need for high performance concrete sealer today we're going to talk to you about you seal you seal is a unique high-performance concrete sealer developed specifically for this industry coming up in a short video we're going to talk to you about everything that you need to know everything from surface preparation mixing application curing and more so please be sure to stay tuned and check it out before we get started it's important to talk about safety and although I use seals a water-based non hazardous product there are some safety guidelines that should be followed so make sure that you read understand and follow all the guidelines that are in the technical data sheet and on the product labeling and step one is surface preparation surface preparation is a very key component to the process of sealing surface preparation can be done one of two ways it can either be done chemically through a product like cleaning edge which is a chemical etching solution or it can be done mechanically with a sandpaper or a diamond abrasion disc now whether the concrete itself is old or new it's very important that the concrete is very clean that it's dry and that it's free of any contaminants now today we have a small sample piece here that we're going to be preparing for you and what we're going to do is use a 220 grit sandpaper just to go over the surface to remove any of the contaminants that remove that cream layer to give it good bonding so the key here is that we want to make sure that we we wouldn't remove this cream layer that's on the surface and also remove any unevenness that might be along the edges or in the center of the surface but by just going over the surface with the sandpaper we're going to be abrading the surface making it a good surface for the sealer to stick to we sanded our surface and now what we want to do is ideally it's a it's a good insurance policy to do what I call an acetone wipe or a little bit of a scrub though make sure you get rid of all the oils and the dirts acetone is a good choice because it evaporates very quickly it pushes out any water that you might have but primarily we're trying to just make sure we get all the dust off the surface but you can see how quickly it's it's actually drying off of the surface look at your rag see if you have any residue if you do it's not a bad idea to give it a second wipe the more dust dirt oil you can get off the surface the better the adhesion of the sealer is going to be okay for step two we're now going to start mixing you seal you seal can be mixed in two different ways it's a simple three-to-one mix ratio so when you open up you get your package it's going to come with a part a it's going to come with a Part B which is the catalyst and it will come with a set of instructions UCL is a simple three to one the eight component is about two-thirds of the way full bottle Part B is always a full bottle when you blend it you can do it one of two ways you can either measure this out by weight or you can measure this by volume by volume we can use different types of graduated cylinders - based upon the amount of sealer that we want to mix up very small batches we can use a syringe larger batches we can use a pitcher and even larger batches we'll just use a bucket for our sample piece here today we're gonna use we're gonna weigh this out by volume or by by weight so what we have here is a scale and we have a small piece here so what I'm going to do is weigh out about 90 grams of Part A and there we are 90 grams of that and then what we're going to do is simply zero out our scale we're going to take the Part B comes in a nice plastic container easy twist off lid and it's nice and easy to pour out of this bottle too so we're just going to add 30 grams of it of Part B out there just drop more all right now for stirring this what we want to use is something that's not going to induce a lot of air so we use a fan type mixing paddle and a drill on medium speed mix for about for about two minutes so we're gonna mix this for about two to three minutes and then we're gonna have to let this sit for about a half an hour now that the sealer has been mixed for about two to three minutes low speeds we want to let this product induct for about thirty minutes now the products actually perfectly fine to use after ten minutes but thirty minutes is going to allow the madding agent to fully emulsify so what that means is that if you were to use this product ten minutes after you mix it it's actually going to have a glassy surface but by allowing it to wait the full 30 minutes it's going to have this nice matte flat set and finish that most people are after now the first coat that we're going to be putting on this is what I call the primer or the bond coat and what this is doing is this is enabling the sealer to have penetrating characteristics you seal has not only a topical coating which gives you that excellent state protection but it also has penetrating characteristics that gives you that more natural look plus it also aids with the adhesion so depending upon the porosity of your concrete so if you have very dense concrete we're gonna want to do a heavy dilution to our primer coat so the primer coat the side of the way the primer coat is basically our sealer but we dilute it with anywhere from five to seven parts water so it's a real heavy dilution so basically what that means is five parts water to one part sealer in this particular application we're going to do a six to one and what I have here is about 246 grams and I'm gonna add 40 grams to make it a six to one so we'll just zero that out well I had 40 grams of our sealer yeah that's okay now what we want to do is just give it another quick stir we're ready to use the sealer the you seal what you can do is you can do it we can apply this product in two different ways one is we can spray it with an HVLP sprayer or we can roll it today we're going to be using the roller technique so here we have our diluted sealer and basically the idea here is to just saturate the surface of the concrete we want to use a liberal amount get plenty on there get the roller nice and wet and it's always a really good idea to make sure you get your edges first that will help eliminate any chances of any drip marks that you get along your edges don't worry about roller marks don't worry about the bubbles we're just looking to get a good heavy saturation of the sealer on here now this process can take anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes what we're looking for is the surface to be completely even once again as you can see here we have a dark spot light spot that's just a difference in hydration so that will even out as this site begins to hydrate more don't forget about your edges keep going over your edges so once again we're just gonna do this this keep it hydrated keep it wet until it completely saturates it the color looks even the concrete is not drinking any more of the sealer we'll just continue to do this until it evens itself out okay well we've been rolling this for about 10 minutes here now and it looks as though it's a pretty well hydrated completely doesn't appear to be absorbing any more the sealer so now it's time to get rid of these roller marks we don't want to just simply roll it as smooth as we can and walk away we'll get some imperfections so what we're going to do is we're actually gonna basically slowly remove the sealer you can see what there's quite a bit of sealer in the roller one way you can do it is just pull all the sealer off to the edges if you're in an environment you can do that otherwise just get the excess into your roller and a clean garbage can or bucket simply squeeze out the excess you could use a new clean dry roller if you choose to but this process works very well we're gonna go over the surface some more get some more of the excess off get our edges so now we're using a just a fair amount of pressure on the roller itself trying to get it rid of the majority of the roller marks I'll give it one more squeeze to get all the any excess sealer outfit not much basically get it as dry as you can you can see the roller marks are starting to diminish a little bit they're still there and now I'm starting to use even less pressure on the roller itself get your edge is nice and the goal here is to keep going over the surface like this until everything looks even and sheen and uniformity we don't see any of the roller marks it's a nice idea to have a cross light on the other side so you can really see what you have and we're getting pretty close so everything here looks pretty pretty even I think now what we're going to do is just walk away come back in about a half an hour 45 minutes and we'll put on our second coat okay well we finished our primer coat here's our piece it's been about an hour now and a good way to tell if it's time to recoat is if you can put your finger in it it doesn't leave a fingerprint one of the real key advantages to the new seal system is the fast recoat time it usually can be recoded within two hours even at full strength so now what we're going to do is we're gonna start our second coat now if you remember the the saturation coat was a heavy heavily diluted coat so penetrated deep into the concrete now we want to start building up some stain protection on the counter surface so what we're gonna do is we're gonna change this down to a let's say a two to one mix ratio so I've got the zeroed out I have 60 grams of water in there I'm gonna put in approximately 30 grams the sealer and you can see we still once again don't need a lot of sealer around there go ahead and give it up and what I'm using is the same roller we used before I just shoved it right in the plastic bag that the sealer comes in and just like our primer coat we're gonna put it on there but as you see it's not darkening the concrete surface it's not enhancing the color anymore because it's not penetrating it's basically sitting on the surface this coat can get applied much quicker we don't need that ten fifteen minutes for it to really soak in and to absorb into the concrete so here our goal is to just get a good even coating all over the surface getting our edge as well and just getting a good even coat over the whole surface once again we don't worry about the air bubbles yet we don't care about roller marks we just want to make sure we have a good solid coating over the entire surface so now we can right away begin our process of smoothing it out what you'll find is that with the lower dilution rates it's going to dry a little quicker it's going to tack up on you a little quicker so you want to make sure that this process gets smoother than the primer coat once again we squeeze out the excess and now I'm to the point now where I'm pretty much zero pressure on the roller just letting the weight of the roller push it around you can see that bubbles are disappearing that roller marks are slowly disappearing sure you get your edges and there you have it that's the second coat now if you want to put subsequent coats on for countertops for high use areas you probably want three perhaps four coats on here the more coats you have on here the more protection your concrete is going to have for a fireplace arounds for things that don't get a lot of use perhaps just a primer coat might be good enough or maybe the primer coat and one secondary coat with your subsequent coats it's important to keep in mind that if you're applying your secondary third coat fourth coat within 16 hours you can apply the sealer directly over itself if you're waiting longer than 16 hours it's a really good idea to stay on the surface with a 220 grit sandpaper it'll give it enough tooth for that next layer to adhere to it very well also keep in mind that if for some reason you have a bad surface you you get interrupted with your sealing job and you have roller marks you happen to have a fly that lands in your sealer you can easily sand this between coats to make sure that you have a nice and smooth flat surface before you put your next coat on and the final steps curing and maintenance you seal is dry to the touch within three hours can be lightly used after 24 hours and full use after seven days for general maintenance we recommend simply a mild soapy solution so to wrap things up we talked about the items that you'll need we talked about surface preparation we talked about the mixing the application the curing and the maintenance and care as you can see you see little to use and maintain whether you're sealing indoors or out concrete countertops furniture architectural elements or flooring you seal is the perfect sealer for your concrete