INDUSTRIAL – Kipling Ave.
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Location:
Kipling Ave., Etobicoke, ON
Repair Types:
Crack repair, patching, cold joint waterproofing
Project Background:
A food-processing plant located in south Etobicoke with multiple production rooms, including a highly sensitive baby-food manufacturing area, which must be kept completely clean. Such projects require the use of zero-VOC materials and enclosures.
Challenges presented by this site: restricted access due to the nature of the business, work in confined spaces around the plant’s equipment, impossibility to interrupt the food processing, and keeping the work area completely free of contaminants. The environment is acidic (in the production rooms, water mixed with acids flows constantly across the floor surface), making repairs more difficult to carry out.
ISSUE
Cracked and delaminated floor and wall surfaces. Interior cold joint leakage. New floor membrane installation.
Cause
A highly acidic environment, with constant flow of hot water mixed with acids over some floor surfaces. High traffic areas (forklift and pedestrian traffic).
Solution
This was a multi-phase project completed between December 2020 and December 2022. The scope of work included cold joint waterproofing, vast patching on ramps and on floors of different production rooms (including around drains), buffer wall waterproofing, localised floor repairs, and a floor membrane installation in a new production room (total area of 4,400 SQF).
STAGE 1
Patching was required in different production rooms. Application design included substrate preparation and patch installation: grinding, industrial-strength adhesive, concrete patch, and light grinding to ensure smoothness.
STAGE 2
Baby-food production room – buffer wall and cold joint waterproofing were required. The following specifications were given for the buffer walls: light grinding to remove delaminated paint, repainting with yellow safety paint, and coating with a clear polyaspartic finish which fully seals the surface, preventing bacteria from being absorbed into the concrete surface. It is also easy to clean.
Cold joints – a weaker area of the concrete surface where the wall and floor slabs meet – were also to be sealed with this coating.
STAGE 3
Several ramps required repair. Application design included crack repair, grinding, polyurethane concrete screed and a cementitious urethane top coat, broadcast with aggregates for a safe, non-slip finish. These materials were specified because of their high mechanical strength, as swell as impact and heat resistance.
STAGE 4
Floor membrane installation in the new production room, with the total area of 4,400 SQF. The application design specified comprised substrate preparation (shotblasting and grinding), crack repair with a fast-setting epoxy-based crack filler, and a polyurethane resin screed – a floor coating ideally suited for demanding environments.
STAGE 5
Localised repairs – these were required in areas different from those patched during the first stage of the project. Application design included surface preparation (saw cutting at a 90-degree angle to a depth of ½” at the edges of the area to be coated, and removal of delaminated concrete), and patching with cementitious urethane.
