Unique Concrete Wins 2014 ASCC Decorative Concrete Award

LIVINGSTON, N.J. - March 15, 2014 - PRLog -- Unique Concrete of West Milford, New Jersey is very proud to annouce that one of our projects from 2013 placed first in a national competition open to all decorative concrete companys in the country.  This was the second time that Unique Concrete of New Jersey has placed first in a competition held by the American Society of Concrete Contractors/DCC (Decorative Concrete Council).  The previous award was for a concrete resurfacing project.  This award was for a project completed in Livingston, New Jersey. Here is a brief summary of the project and what it involved.

The pool deck was the final phase of a 3 phase project that began in September of 2009.  The first phase was a front entryway and upper balcony area, the second phase was two checkerboard areas with sidewalks that connected them, and the third phase was the pool surround.  Each phase presented different and unique challenges that we were able to overcome. The upper balcony was over 1,500 sq feet which was elevated, creating difficult circumstances for placing and finishing the concrete. The checkerboards were challenging from a layout perspective, while keeping to a tight construction timeline. The pool deck was perhaps the most challenging phase.

The entire pool deck area was placed on an area of the yard that was filled in.  In order to prevent settlement of our handcrafted stone decking, we designed the placement of footings in strategic places over the entire deck area.  There was also limited accessibility to the site, this made the placement of the #5 rebar and the pouring of the structural slab challenging.  The steel was placed on roughly 2.5’ centers, while keeping saw cut placement in mind.  The over 40 yards of fibered reinforced, 4000 psi concrete was pumped using a boom truck and placed by a crew of 4.  Once the concrete was placed and screeded, it was then scarified in preparation for the placement of our handcrafted stone.  This “stone” was mixed on site using a proprietary mix that utilized a finely graded concrete sand, white portland, titanium dioxide, colloidal silica, and PVA fibers.  With our process we first pour a heavily reinforced structural slab, which in this case was approximately 5.5” thick, then we pour our topping layer which is mixed on site stamped, shaped and textured at approximately 1”.  This becomes a wearable topping that is a hybrid of many different processes and since the mix itself is white, it does not rely on the use of stains to achieve the white coloring.   All of the joints are then grouted in a separate process and tooled.  Everything was then densified with a colloidal silica densifier, then sealed with a low solids waterbased sealer.  During the job we took several temperature readings of the white concrete and the natural limestone coping, the white concrete was at least 20 -30 degrees cooler.

http://www.concretedecor.net/decorativeconcretearticles/v...

http://www.ascconline.org/

http://www.concretenetwork.com/awards/dcc-2014.html