Concrete floors are about as durable as you would expect, but they benefit from surface coatings just like any other flooring material, and a wide variety of paints, coatings and sealants are used to protect concrete floors from corrosive substances, stains and heavy impacts. Unfortunately, these coatings have a limited shelf life, and while reapplying coatings to a worn conrete floor is a relatively simple process, the remaining vestiges of the original coatings must be removed for the new coating to properly take.

There are a variety of ways to remove aged concrete coatings, but abrasive blasting is one of the best and most widely used. Here are just some of the many advantages of choosing abrasive blasting surfaces to remove degraded paints and worn-out coatings from your concrete floors:

Fast

Of all the reasons abrasive blasting is preferred over other concrete coating removal methods, sheer speed is probably the most important, and a skilled operator working with  a suitably powerful sandblaster or shotblaster can remove wide swathes of old concrete paint and sealants in a very short space of time. This is particularly important for renewing concrete floors in commercial buildings such as warehouses, minimising the downtime experienced while your concrete floors are treated.

Inexpensive

The rapidity and efficiency of abrasive blasting means that even the largest concrete floors can be thorough denuded of their aged coatings in a matter of hours. This helps keep labour costs to a minimum, and reduces profit losses caused by the aforementioned downtime. The various medias used to blast your concrete are also generally inexpensive, and can be far more cost effective than liquid coating strippers when used over larger areas.

Prepares concrete for next coating

Whether you intend to coat your newly exposed concrete in paint, powder coatings or epoxy resins, all of these coatings will bond to the concrete more securely if the concrete undergoes surface treatment first. Abrasive blasting is one of the most popular concrete surface preparation methods, and imparts a finely textured surface to the concrete that coatings bond to readily. As such, you can combine removal of old coatings and surface preparation for the next coating into a single task, saving you considerable amounts of time, money and effort.

Environmentally friendly

Using large amounts of corrosive liquid strippers to remove paint and coatings from your concrete isn't exactly environmentally conscious, and yo can be hit with heavy fines if these strippers leak into local waterways or groundwater tables. Abrasive blasters, on the other hand, can be used with a wide variety of harmless, environmentally friendly blasting medias. Sodium bicarbonate, recycled glass beads, crushed walnut hulls and good old-fashioned sand are all eco-friendly and effective media choices.