Coatings Rep Helps Keep Casino Parking
Structure Project Rolling
By Jack Innis   

Photos courtesy of  RFI Consultants, LLC and Tnemec

It takes thousands upon thousands of employees to keep the average Las Vegas casino rolling. Dealers, cashiers, bartenders, hostesses, food and beverage workers, hotel staff, and gift shop workers all interact with the gaming public 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Behind the scenes, accountants, administrators, marketing managers, security personnel, and supervisors work nonstop to ensure business flows smoothly.

Ever wonder where thousands of casino workers park their cars? They can’t park in guest parking areas: patrons would spend more time circling the lots than playing slots. Can’t park on the strip or in nearby residential areas: Las Vegas business and home owners would storm city hall!

Employee parking became a huge issue for Bellagio Resort and Casino when new construction at the $11 billion CityCenter project (“Fireproofing Vegas: High Stakes Safety,” CoatingsPro, March 2010) displaced their old structure.

     
A new facility had to be built to keep the resort and casino humming. Plans for a 10-story, 5,300 space employee parking structure were developed that called for protective coatings on interior concrete, exterior concrete, columns, and decorative steel. But there was a problem.

In a city where time is money and money is time, buildings go up in a hurry. Nobody wants to wait around for concrete to cure or for the weather to warm up so they can apply coatings. But that’s exactly the situation owners faced when they realized coatings would need to be applied to green concrete beginning in November when desert overnight temperatures can dip below 40°F/4°C.

Lucky Roll of the Dice

It takes a lot of people to get a difficult coatings project rolling: owner’s representatives, coatings inspectors, and applicators to name a few. But the role of the manufacturer’s coatings representative is often the least understood. In the case of Bellagio Resort and Casino’s new parking structure, coatings rep Eric Brackman played a pivotal role in helping the project get started -- and finished -- on time.

Brackman, now an independent coatings consultant with RFI Consultants, LLC, was working as a Tnemec rep when he first heard about the project.

“I was very lucky; this project was dropped into my lap,” the Peoria, Arizona-based Brackman says. “The project originally specified a different manufacturer, but because the concrete would be fairly fresh and the application temperatures cold, they couldn’t use the coating system specified.”

Brackman explains that because of high pH levels in the green concrete (as fresh as seven days after the pour), the primer on the originally specified two-coat system couldn’t be used. In addition, owner’s representatives needed a system that could be laid down on cold steel in the winter. No primer, no finish coat. No cold weather application, no parking structure!

Brackman knew Tnemec had the right products for the job. Self-priming W.B. Tneme-crete 180 acrylic emulsion can be applied with airless, roller, or brush systems direct to concrete, even seven days fresh and as cold as 35°F (2°C). Tnemec’s three-coat steel system — Tneme-zinc 90-97 primer (35°F/2°C min), Endura-Shield Series 73 intermediate coat (35°F/2°C min), and Fluoronar Series 1070 topcoat (40°F/4°C min) — would be up to the task too.

“If this project had been more normal, I never would have heard about it or had a shot at it,” says Brackman. But hearing about a project is a long way from supplying the coatings!

Chicago Shuffle

Brackman knew his initial hurdle would be a major one. The coatings contractor on the project, Tiffiny Decorating Company, is a nationwide firm based out of Chicago. Although Brackman had a good relationship with the firm’s coating crews in the Las Vegas area, he’d have to convince Chicago top brass that they could trust Tnemec — and him! Brackman flew to Chicago and made his pitch.

“It took me a little bit to win over some of the decision makers in the Chicago area, but we resolved everything,” Brackman says. “I said, ‘These are the products we can use. I’ll take care of you. Let’s all make some money.’ ”

Brackman’s primary objective as coatings rep was to deliver the coatings and make sure they were stored properly. A chain link fence area was established on the parking structure’s first floor, out of direct sunlight, to make sure drums of coatings never exceeded maximum storage temperatures of 110°F/43°C. Nighttime temperatures never dipped enough to threaten the integrity of the Tneme-crete 180 drums, which can tolerate 35°F/2°C. The other products are certified to 20°F/-7°C.

“We ordered the material by truck loads, used more than 34,000 gallons (128,704.008L) of paint, and Eric made sure we were never without,” says project supervisor and Tiffiny Decorating’s Nevada Division Vice President Curtis Keehr. “We worked very closely on delivery estimates and never had an issue with supply.”

Beyond keeping spray guns fully primed, Brackman helped keep the project environmentally “green” by providing drum liners for his products.

“We supplied liners, so when the drums were empty they could take off the tops, dispose of the liners, and have somebody come by and recycle, crush, or resell them,” he says. “It’s easier to recycle that way. Nobody wants drums with an inch of acrylic paint left over.”

When Water Rolls Around

Specs called for a 3,000 psi pressure wash to help make sure surfaces were free of oil, grease, release agents, and other contaminants.

Brackman, also a NACE Level III coatings inspector and instructor, used a surface comparator to make sure the concrete matched visual specifications, plus he performed frequent tests to ensure high pH values didn’t skyrocket and interfere with adhesion. He also conducted a very simple test to help determine whether anything might block the Tneme-crete 180 from sticking.

“The crew’s prep procedure was just fine,” Brackman says. “I used the water break test to make sure the surface was ready for coating. It’s an easy test. Just take a spray bottle, find a dry piece of concrete, and mist it. If water pools up like you just waxed your car, you have some sort of contaminant or something in the concrete itself that won’t let water penetrate. When water rolls around and doesn’t penetrate, chances are the coating won’t either. Happily, I didn’t find any areas that water wouldn’t penetrate.”

Prep complete, the 10- to 20-man Tiffiny coatings crew began airless spraying, rolling, and brushing with Tneme-crete 180 at up to 10 mils (0.254mm) DFT to approximately two million square feet (185,806.08m²) of interior space, says Brackman. By working with the general contractor, the crew was able to control sizeable portions of entire levels, so overspray was not an issue. The coatings were going down nicely, even in the cold, and the crew was on track to meet their deadline when a small problem nearly caused a major delay.

The coatings crew found an area of rough concrete. Nobody wants to see a bunch of pinholes in a finished coating, but nobody wants to tell the boss they need two coats instead of one! So they called their Tnemec rep.

“You don’t want the crew sitting around scratching their heads figuring out how to approach these areas,” Brackman says. “I showed them how to do it in one coat: Just spray down a light coat and while the material is still nice and wet, use a 3/4-inch (1.905cm) nap roller to go over it and push it into the pores. Push it in real good. As soon as you’re done doing that, have your guys jump back behind you and spray a nice coat over the top to shake it up. It will look real good.”

With the crew back on track, Brackman headed to a coatings conference in Mexico. However, that conference was interrupted with the type of call no paint rep wants to get.

Deal With It!

“I got a horrible message on my voice mail while I was in meetings down in Mexico,” says Brackman. “I had told them if problems came up, give me a call and they were saying the Series 180 was delaminating on parts of the ceiling.”

Brackman hopped aboard the first available jet, rolled into Vegas, and met up with Keehr. He was led to a level on the Bellagio parking structure where several baseball- to basketball-sized delaminated areas appeared on the ceiling.

He told Keehr right away that he’d do whatever needed to be done to right the situation, but couldn’t grasp why the coating was failing.

“We had done adhesion tests earlier and the 180 was holding just fine,” Brackman says. “We ended up discovering that underneath the areas of delamination, the substrate was actually crumbling!”

Brackman and Keehr investigated further and ultimately concluded that another trade had used improper techniques in applying patching material — supplied by a third party — to smooth over rough areas that sometimes occur during concrete pours. Even though Tnemec and Tiffiny had nothing to do with the failure, Brackman and Keehr worked to find a solution.

“We discovered a number of different errors,” Brackman says. “They hadn’t used the provided sealer over the patch system and hadn’t added an acrylic fortifier to the material. Without those, the patches were very brittle and porous. Once the third party corrected those issues, we never had to deal with that problem again.”

Hot and Cold

While part of the Tiffiny crew laid down coatings on the interior concrete, Brackman checked progress on the decorative steel surfaces.

Tneme-zinc Series 90-97 had been shop-applied (approximately 3 mils/0.762mm DFT), so the other on-site Tiffiny crew started by using 90-97 to touch up any areas scuffed during transit and fabrication. Using their airless spray equipment, the crew next applied a 2.5 mil (0.064mm) DFT single coat of Endura-Shield Series 73. The two-part aliphatic acrylic polyurethane is mixed by first stirring up the contents of part A to ensure no pigment remains on the bottom. Part B is added while maintaining agitation until the two components are thoroughly combined. Proper mixing ensures a pot life that ranges from eight hours at 40°F/4°C to two hours at 100°F/38°C. This is one project in which applicators actually experienced both temperature extremes.

While on the project, Brackman was rarely without his little black bag of tools. They’re essentially the same items he keeps as a consultant and NACE Level III inspector.

“What I pack may vary from project to project, but I usually have a dust kit to check for particles, a brush to wipe away dirt, a bottle for the water break test, surface comparators, mil thickness gauges, tape test kits, and colored chalk to circle anything questionable on substrates. I carry a pocket knife or box cutter in case I need to manipulate a coating or substrate. To look at areas I really can’t see too well, I pack a flashlight and small mirror. There’s also a camera and digital tape recorder because I usually don’t have time to write things down.”

While items in his kit may vary from project to project, there’s one thing Brackman never fails to bring along: Information!

“Whether I’m acting as a coatings rep, inspector, or consultant, I need to have information in the form of real paperwork in hand. That includes specifications, submittals — everything surrounding the project including e-mail chains. No matter what your role, you need know what you’re looking at and the situation you’re getting into to do a good evaluation.”

While the Tiffiny crew wrapped up by spray applying Tnemec Fluoronar Series 1070 topcoat to the steel decorative surfaces (2.5 mils/0.064mm DFT in one pass), Brackman reviewed the project.

With Tneme-crete 180’s ability to stick to concrete despite high pH values and low ambient temperatures, the project that began in November would finish on schedule in June. The decorative steel coating system — Tneme-zinc 90-97 primer, Endura-Shield Series 73 intermediate coat, and Fluoronar Series 1070 topcoat — handled the cold nicely and was strong enough to be considered nearly overkill for this application.

“Everyone involved was extremely happy how the choices/products turned out,” Brackman says. “They were amazed how the coatings could be applied successfully in cold weather on concrete with high pH levels, and still look this good.”

The completed parking structure probably also looked good to Bellagio Resort and Casino workers as they rolled in to work at their fast-paced days in the gaming world!

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