Creative Designs Plus, Inc. - Call (208) 409-1903 Today - Serving Nampa, Boise ID - Commercial Concrete Restoration
Intermountain Gas Brick Restoration
This building was constructed in the early 60’s.The brick was made specifically for the project. The brick is glazed, fired porcelain, like a fired clay pot. They are the typical 4″x 8″ dimension, but each brick is irregular with it’s own color hues and deformities.
The brick were made in 6 different colors. They have a high compressive strength, but are brittle. The Headquarters campus is listed on the Smithsonian Historic Registry.
Old landscaping practices had sprinklers spraying the buildings. In recent years that practice has been corrected due to all the sprinkler stained structures. The campus was stained by sprinklers for 40-50 years. Some areas had unbelievable mineral deposits.
We approached the client with our proposal to restore the brick of the Headquarters, and did sample areas for them to review. They changed the sprinklers to no longer spray the buildings, and we started.
We had to develop a technique that would remove the terrible mineral deposits without damaging the brick, restore the original colors and preserve it for years. To compound the staining problem, these brittle, 50-year-old bricks had developed billions of hairline cracks, some worse than others.
Fifty years of sprinkler mineral deposits had formed ON and IN these cracks. This compromised the strength of the bricks, meaning we had to be very careful not to damage them. This had to be done quickly, and affordably …TALL ORDER.
The ROUND BUILDING did not have sprinkler stains, but mold had formed in the grout lines, which we removed. To compound that, this building houses a generator which creates electricity for the campus.
The generator created a high humidity level, which added to the mineral deposits on the entrance of the building.These mineral deposits looked like something from a cave! When we finished that portion of the project the brick all looked like polished glass, reflecting the surrounding landscape.
The facilities supervisor asked me how I felt about the results. I said, ” When I can comb my hair in the reflection of a brick, I consider my job done.” He laughed, and was very pleased with our work.
Church
Entry
There was carpet on the entry that the owners tried to remove. They removed some of the carpet and glue, and damaged the concrete. When we treated it, we eliminated the carpet’s fuzz and made the carpet and glue into a solid mass that bonded to the concrete. Afterwards, we overlaid it with our material. Our material bonded completely, was hard as a rock the next day, and had no cracking!