Concrete Acid Stain Application instructions and recommendations

 
Concrete Acid Stain Application

A. Preparation of Existing Concrete Surface

Curing agents, sealers, paints, coatings, waxes or water repellents must be removed prior to the concrete acid stain application. Mechanical methods of removal are not advised as they may scratch the surface leaving unsightly patterns of scratches in the surface.

Older concrete surfaces need to be tested for acceptance of the acid stain. The cleaned surface must be penetrable by water. If water beads on the surface and is not readily absorbed into the concrete, mild acidic detergents such as our Dyna-Blue concrete renovator may be of assistance in your concrete acid stain application. Never acid etch concrete to be acid stained. This will use up the free lime in the concrete and leave you with a surface that is not stainable for concrete acid stain application.

B. New Concrete:

Freshly poured concrete should be sufficiently cured, a minimum of thirty days before concrete acid stain application. If score patterns are desired, a diamond blade grinder may be used to score various patterns, borders or designs onto the surface prior to, or after concrete acid stain application. If light colored grout lines are desired score after staining process is complete.

Freshly poured or recently poured concrete needs to be scrubbed thoroughly, sometimes more thoroughly than old concrete due to what is known as latentcy, this is the "dust", if you will that remains on top of the concrete after it is poured and cured.

This latentcy will not allow the concrete stain to penetrate as is needed to provide a beautiful concrete acid stain application so we need to use a floor maintainer (buffer) with a black or green scrub pad and TSP (trisodium phosphate) or our favorite, Dyna Blue, to scrub and shop vac the floor clean.

 
C. Cleaning of Concrete:

These next two steps will take you from having a good concrete stained floor to a Fantastic concrete acid stain application. As we say in the Decorative Concrete industry, application of the pretty stuff is easy but the preparation of the concrete is what makes the difference and boy will this make a difference as you'll see and be very happy you took the time and effort to do it.

First we need to scrape the paint and other things off the concrete before the concrete stain process, you will not find them all but when you wet the concrete you will see everything as we see here, we have scrubbed the concrete and are now vacuuming.