Bio-Contamination of Concrete Floors

BRENDAN: G’day all, and welcome to the latest podcast in MARKHAM’s Invisible Strength series. Today we’re looking at Bio-Contamination of Concrete Floors.

I’m Brendan Stead from the marketing team, and with me virtually today is Wade Lanham, NSW project consultant. Wade is usually based in our Sydney office, but owing to the restrictions that are on at the moment, he’s joining us from home. Wade, give the audience a shout out, and tell us about yourself!

WADE: G’day everyone! Thanks for listening. Yes, I’m Wade, I’ve been working for MARKHAM for about three years now. Traditionally, I’ve been working right up the east coast of Australia, from Victoria right up to north Queensland but recently I’ve adjusted my focus to be NSW, trying to help out the local people here a bit more and as we spread our wings. So yeah it’s good to be here. Hopefully, you can learn a bit today, would be good.

BRENDAN: Thanks, Wade! We’re also joined virtually by Henry Mitchell who is design and delivery sales manager in the head office at Napier, New Zealand. Your turn, Henry!

HENRY: G’day everybody, and thanks, Brendan. A pleasure to be here today, and tell a little bit about some of the learnings we’ve picked up over the past few years. I’ve been with MARKHAM for, coming up, nine and half years now, and yes, as Brendan said, working in the project and delivery team in New Zealand.

BRENDAN: Brilliant! So we’re talking today about bio-contamination of concrete floors. Wade, can you give us some background on this issue and where it occurs?

WADE: Yes, it probably does need a little bit of background. When people think bio-contamination, they’re probably thinking more of sewerage, water treatment plants, or chemicals, that type of thing. But what we’re going to focus on today is where bio-fluids are actually getting into flooring slabs. Think of age cares and hospitals, they are really good examples.

BRENDAN: Right, so what’s the problem with that?

WADE: Yes, sorry. Good question. We’re talking about biofluids that can’t necessarily be cleaned away. We think of things like bodily fluids and that type of thing; once they’re into the concrete, things like replacing floor coverings doesn’t help. What I mean by, doesn’t help… They can produce a lot of odours and things like that, it’s very noticeable. It’s both bad for the nose, and it’s also bad for the concrete itself, it can lead to weakness within the slab.

BRENDAN: Okay, okay. So, Henry, give us your take on that, you’ve seen these sorts of issues happen.

HENRY: Yes, thanks, Brendan. So I guess what we’ve got to first understand is that concrete is porous. It’s like a fine sponge. Even when we get a 50 MPA concrete we get a lot denser concrete; but over time we will get moisture migration through concrete, that sort of thing. So microcracking, bleed water porosities, are almost impossible to avoid.

So contaminants can get into the other concrete, and obviously, once they’re in the concrete, there’s no way you can get them out. You can’t grind or … so yes, we need to prevent the contaminants from getting in, in the first place.

BRENDAN: Okay, so how do you do that?

HENRY: Yes, so what we’re here to talk to you guys about today, is colloidal silica hydrogel treatment.

So that’s when the free moisture in the concrete, at the time of green concrete, actually gets transformed into a hydrogel. So under a nano form as such. So concrete porosities are about 50 nanometres. A human hair is about 100,000, so you can see the comparison there. And hydrogel, hydro silica hydrogel, can get down to about 10.

So we get, right through our concrete, where we basically stop any moisture and nasties getting into our concrete. And the bonus is that also is that we can moisture control for floor coverings and vinyl and other areas like that.

WADE: Henry, you’ve got heaps of New Zealand projects that you’ve used this treatment on, haven’t you? Do you want to give us some examples?

HENRY: Yes, we have. Well, we’ve worked with … in New Zealand, we’ve been working with the likes of Ryman for about 23-24 years now. We’ve got Summerset’s. We do a lot of independent age care as well. The thing which these big companies are seeing now is that … a lot of them are seeing the benefits to do it early on. So they’re including it in their outline spec. So at the design stage, they’re including it because they can see the time savings, that sort of thing.

What about Aussie, Wade?

WADE: Yeah, we’ve got similar things over in Australia here. I mean, Rymans’s one that’s now branched out into Australia, that we’ve based off our relationship in New Zealand. Been doing all their aged care over here. We have people like Opal Aged Care … and it’s not just the age care providers. We’ve actually worked really closely with some of the builders that specialise in age care. A lot of the architects that specialise in age care.

We’ve also been involved with a lot of hospitals recently, such as Maitland Hospital, NSW; Goulburn Hospital, NSW; Wonthaggi Hospital down in Victoria. So there’s quite a lot of different, varied uses for these. It’s not just age care we’re talking about.

BRENDAN: OK, so tell us a little bit more about that. So hospitals and aged care are not the only types of project the treatment suits?

HENRY: No, no, not at all. There’s a lot of other areas as well. Laboratories, animal care, vets, that sort of thing. I do recall actually talking to an architect once about a part of town, they wanted to treat the concrete in part of a car park building because they had some bad odours after Friday nights! So they wanted to protect the concrete there. So it can be used in a lot of different areas and obviously from day one – it just serves that purpose.

WADE: Yes, I’ve actually had a few similar ones here with that car park stairwell situation! And it’s not just people in those situations. We’ve got a couple of residential buildings, and they’re “pet friendly” and they’ve really benefited from this type of barrier as well.

HENRY: Yeah, it’s becoming a lot … in the spec of these new-age cares, isn’t it, that they’re becoming pet friendly. So yes, pet and obviously human.

WADE: Yes, absolutely. It really, really helps.

BRENDAN: Very cool! And how does this compare to the traditionally used paint-on hygiene sealers?

WADE: The main difference between the two is the permanency of the two, so traditional paint on type sealers generally go down at the back end of the project. There can be some issues between compatibility with the actual paint on hygiene sealer and then flooring adhesives etc. But yes, the biggest thing is that permanency. The traditional paint on topical sealers quite often have to be replaced regularly. This often happens when they put new carpet into those rooms. It usually has to be ground back off and then re-laid, and the compatibility issue comes back up again. But with these hydrogel treatments we’re talking about, they’re permanently in the concrete; they can’t be ground off; they can’t be worn away; so you’re always getting that concrete protection.

BRENDAN: Yes I see. That’s very beneficial. And are there any points we have touched on, that we should cover off? Any other benefits of the product?

HENRY: Yes, I think, Brendan, we also touched earlier on curing; curing of concrete, so it makes a great time saver. Obviously, with the hydrogel treatments, they are put on at the time of green concrete, so you get curing equal to 14 days of water ponding. You get your moisture control done for floor coverings. And you get your hygiene seal, or your medi-seal done at the same time. It just saves a whole lot of programme time for the construction sites.

BRENDAN: That’s great! That’s a great save in time and money.

Well thanks for your time, Wade and Henry! It’s been great going over these points. And to our listeners, why don’t you visit www.markhamglobal.com and check out our key concrete treatments, or get in touch?

Stay safe, all, and don’t miss our next episode!