Qustion on slab protection. We are planning on building an all concrete home. Two stories on a bacement, ICFs and Hambro floor system. Since we are planing to acid stain all the floors, it brings up the question "how much slab protection is needed?" In an ideal world, sure protect all you can. I fear it may not be very practical.  I see a few options;

1 Do nothing and clean the slab after spills during ICF pour.
2 Protect perimeter during pours and 4x8 plywood walk ways for major pathways
3 Full time covering once poured

What type of protection material would be reccomended?

Patrick T

So far we have not had much luck trying to protect the slab, to many factors that can effect the barrier that you use. We did find a couple of years ago that cleaning up the spills as fast as possible before they cure and then using a commercial floor scrubber prior to the staining worked very well, you do need to make sure that the surface is dry before applying the stains.

Patrick,
We are working on a house now that the owner is going to stain a SpeedFloor. It is the floor above a walk out basement basement so it is challenging to say the least. We are bracing on the outside of the walls. some of the braces are set 11' above grade. We have a verry robust bracing system.  Some of the diaginals are 28' longallowing us to do "tall walls".  We will seal the floor with a plastic sheet taped to the ICF walls inside the house. We will clean up all splatter immediately with a preasure washer after the pump to insure that nothing remains on the slab. It obviously takes a great deal more time to do all this and time is money. The impossible just takes a little longer to achieve.

I have not protected a slab during ICF pours, not having done one yet,  but have protectd many from standard construction.  We cover with curing paper by Fortifiber, which is waterproof and easy to walk on.  Over that we use Thermoply with all the seams taped.  Inexpensive, durable and lightweight.  Not sure what parts of the country it is available in.  We are in Calif.

John

Im not to familiar with the process of acid staining, but on our hambro jobs all of our flat work was sealed. We layed out scrap sheets of osb and cardboard down along the interior perimeter of the walls before we poured. Even though there were a few spots that got a splash of concrete here and there I found that it wasn't very difficult at all to take a flat headed shovel or form scraper to remove the unwanted dried up patches.

Are you installing radiant heat in the hambro? We were concerned about bracing attachment to the floor because of the risk of puncturing a pex tube. We wound up using the top plate material to temperarily secure our bracing:

pcoughlin,

Yes, radient heating.  Nice bracing trick!

I assume with a slick finish most junk will scape off. Oil is a big issue though, repels stain. The Hambro system requires 4x8 sheets of osb between joists. I could use them on the floor as protection .....if it doesn't rain.

Patrick