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Commercial Concrete Sealing · Oak Park Heights, MN · Est. 2003

Commercial Concrete Sealing in Oak Park Heights, Minnesota.

Oak Park Heights is a small Washington County city on the St. Croix directly south of Stillwater, at the Minnesota end of the St. Croix Crossing. It carries far more commercial and industrial ground than a city of under five thousand people normally would, because Highway 36 runs the length of it. Commercial concrete floor sealing for Oak Park Heights retail, schools, offices and light industrial. We seal the concrete you have rather than grinding it, and the re-polish cycle ends.

Text Dave · (715) 307-8302 How It Works
1 Coat Bonded to the concrete you have
3-5YR Between coats Manufacturer rating in normal traffic
4-5HRS To foot traffic Cut overnight, open in the morning
8LBS Moisture limit ASTM F1869, per 1,000 sq ft in 24 hours

Why we seal instead of re-polishing in Oak Park Heights

What sealing does on a concrete floor.

Interior concrete is finished one of a few ways: burnished and left bare, densified and guarded, mechanically polished, or coated. All of them wear in the same places and all of them get quoted the same way when they do, which is more of what was done the first time. A urethane finish is a different approach. It goes on top, it takes the wear instead of the concrete, and when it is worn it is sanded and recoated rather than removed.

The 6-step job

What the work looks like in Oak Park Heights.

The same sequence whether it is a retail sales floor, a school corridor or an office.

  1. Look at the slab

    What the floor is: burnished bare concrete, densified and guarded, mechanically polished, or a cementitious overlay. Then what is on it, how the joints and any patches have held, and where the traffic actually runs. Overlays and toppings change the scope, so we establish that first.

  2. Test the moisture

    Calcium chloride test to ASTM F1869 on any slab on grade, run over 72 hours, looking for under 8 pounds per 1,000 square feet in 24 hours. This happens before a price is agreed, not after. A slab that reads high is one we will tell you not to coat, and it is better to know that from a test than from a floor letting go in year two.

  3. Strip and clean

    Whatever is on the concrete comes off: guard, old sealer, acrylic, or the residue of a burnishing program. Stripper dwells, the floor is machine scrubbed in two directions, and edges, joints and the perimeter get worked by hand. Concrete holds product in its pores, so this step gets checked rather than assumed.

  4. Extract and neutralize

    The slurry comes up with a wet vacuum, then a citric acid scrub brings the surface back to neutral and we pH test to confirm it. Concrete is alkaline to begin with, so this reading matters more here than on any other floor we work on.

  5. Check the conditions

    Air temperature, humidity, floor temperature and dew point are read and recorded before mixing, and the floor has to sit at least 5 degrees above the dew point. A slab is the coldest surface in the building, so it is the one most likely to fail that check, which is another reason this work suits the heating season.

  6. Seal it and hand it back

    Two technicians, one spreading and one back-rolling immediately behind, with traction additive mixed in where the floor takes water. The area stays closed until it is dry with the ready time posted on the door, and foot traffic goes back on in 4 to 5 hours on the fast formula. Then we go over cleaning, which is a dust mop, water, and no burnisher.

Oak Park Heights questions

Common questions for Oak Park Heights homeowners.

How far is Oak Park Heights from your shop?
About 35 minutes, and it is one of the shorter runs we make into Minnesota. Wisconsin 35 north past Hudson, then west on Highway 64 across the St. Croix Crossing, puts you at the Highway 36 interchange.
Do you do commercial floors, or just houses?
Both, and Oak Park Heights is more commercial than most towns its size. Polyurea handles forklift traffic, dropped tools, hot tires and chemical exposure in a way a rolled-on epoxy does not, and it cures fast enough that a floor is generally back in service the next day rather than the next week.
Our slab is down near Highway 95 by the river. Does that matter?
For a garage on grade, usually not. For a basement or a lower level on the low ground near the St. Croix, yes. River-valley slabs pass more moisture than the ones up on the bench, so we run a calcium chloride test before quoting, and a high reading gets a vapor-mitigation primer under the polyurea.
What does it cost compared to re-polishing the floor?
Sealing is the less expensive of the two in nearly every case, because the labor is cleaning rather than several passes of diamond tooling with slurry extraction and dust containment behind them. What moves our number is how much has to come off the slab first. We walk the floor, run the moisture test, and give you a fixed written price before any work starts.
Can forklifts or pallet jacks run on it?
No. The manufacturer does not rate this finish for wheeled traffic and we will not put it where that traffic runs. A warehouse aisle, a loading area or a shop floor wants the polyurea system on our commercial floor coatings page, which is built for forklifts and hot tires. If your building has both kinds of floor, we will quote both and tell you which line goes where.
Will it go over polished concrete?
Yes, and that is a common reason people call. The polish stays where it is, the guard and any burnishing residue come off, and one coat goes over the top. The floor keeps the look the polishing gave it and stops needing the burnisher to hold it. What it will not do is restore a polished floor that has been physically worn through, which needs material removed before anything goes on.
What is the moisture test and why does it happen first?
It is a calcium chloride test run to ASTM F1869. A measured dish of salt sits under a sealed dome on the bare slab for 72 hours and is weighed to find how much water vapor the concrete is giving off. Anything under 8 pounds per 1,000 square feet in 24 hours is fine to coat. Over that, moisture will push the film off the slab eventually no matter how well it goes down, and the right answer is to say so before you have paid for a floor finish.
Does it change how the concrete looks?
It wets the surface, so the color deepens and whatever character the slab has comes up rather than going flat. Gloss reads bright and reflective, which suits retail and lobbies. Matte keeps the concrete looking like concrete and hides scuffing better. They cannot be mixed to make a satin; that is done by adding aggregate to either one.
What about a cementitious overlay or topping?
Those can be coated, but not the same way. An overlay has to be ground and primed before the finish goes on, which is more prep, more time and a different price than sealing a slab. It is worth telling us on the phone if you know the floor is a topping rather than the original slab, because it changes the scope of the walk.
How long is the area out of service?
Foot traffic returns 4 to 5 hours after the coat goes down on the fast formula, 8 hours on the slower one, so an area cut in the evening is open the next morning. Large floors get split into sections so no part of the building closes for a full day. The finish is low odor and low VOC, 46 g/L in gloss and 25 in matte, which is what makes overnight work in an occupied building possible.
How is it cleaned afterward?
Dust mop, then damp mop with water or a neutral cleaner, and an auto-scrubber with a microfiber pad on the open runs. No burnisher, no guard, and nothing that adds a layer on top. For a building coming off a densify-and-guard program, that is usually the biggest change to the routine.

More in Oak Park Heights

All the services we offer in Oak Park Heights, MN.

A building with sealed concrete in the lobby usually has VCT down the corridors and tile in the restrooms. All of it can be done on the same visit.

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