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My experience with BallistiX
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KPack
Well-known member
Thanks for putting the video together. I feel your pain on the floor cleaning and prep. That was way more work than I expected.
I'm assuming that the concrete was porous and absorbed most of the first coat of Ballistix. For troweled concrete like yours and mine I believe the recommendation is to use some sort of sealer or primer first. The Grenade primer that Ballistix has creates some sort of a "false floor", as they call it, that keeps the Ballistix from getting lost in the concrete. Armorpoxy sells acrylic sealer (8400X) to use before the application of Ballistix for the same purpose.
It looks like you have some of the same beading issues I had when I first put mine down. I think mine was a few different issues....acrylic sealer not fully cured, floor too cold, improper mix of Ballistix, etc. Could be any number of things. It was a pain to remediate, but the second application turned out much better for me. So I screwed something up the first time, but not sure what.
I'm assuming that the concrete was porous and absorbed most of the first coat of Ballistix. For troweled concrete like yours and mine I believe the recommendation is to use some sort of sealer or primer first. The Grenade primer that Ballistix has creates some sort of a "false floor", as they call it, that keeps the Ballistix from getting lost in the concrete. Armorpoxy sells acrylic sealer (8400X) to use before the application of Ballistix for the same purpose.
It looks like you have some of the same beading issues I had when I first put mine down. I think mine was a few different issues....acrylic sealer not fully cured, floor too cold, improper mix of Ballistix, etc. Could be any number of things. It was a pain to remediate, but the second application turned out much better for me. So I screwed something up the first time, but not sure what.
Zengineer
Well-known member
Were you able to determine a definitive root cause to the unevenness of the colour/application?
Not really but I can tell you how to get it better than mine.
My concrete was too porous.
Use the primer. I underestimated how little time it took to do 400 sq ft. I was afraid I would not be able to prime and then coat within 10 min. I know now rhis stuff goes down easy and fast.
Make sure you have a uniform substrate. I should have gone down to 60 grit then worked up but my my biggest concern was the tire tracks and I got that done with the 320.
Hindsight I would use primer next time but im still happy with how well it rejects fluid
My concrete was too porous.
Use the primer. I underestimated how little time it took to do 400 sq ft. I was afraid I would not be able to prime and then coat within 10 min. I know now rhis stuff goes down easy and fast.
Make sure you have a uniform substrate. I should have gone down to 60 grit then worked up but my my biggest concern was the tire tracks and I got that done with the 320.
Hindsight I would use primer next time but im still happy with how well it rejects fluid
1600 sq feet (two coats so 3200 coverage), with pads and sanding disks and 1 week rental of the buffer was about $1400. I had 1 full gallon that i didn't need so that would have saved over $300. If I recall, one gallon (~$350) covers about 1100sq ft.
I have 1 gallon left if you want it. Its still got a few weeks of shelf life left. warrenton.
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Great video on Ballistix. The issues this person had was due to the porosity of the floor and not using a Ballistix Primer coat, or a sealer to seal the floor to get the uniform finish. For exactly this reason is why we recommend using our kits which include the sealer coat to lead to a more even finish.