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Why use polymer concentrates?

Why use cementitious polymer concentrates and sealers? What is the benefit?

Resellers of polymer concentrates are hard to find, there are very few companies who offer to sell them, yet some do, like Barefoot Concrete. Why is this?

The answer is both simple and complex. As a simple answer, a polymer concentrate can be diluted to the required concentration and adapted to the system or process used in the concrete coating or polishing process.

As a more complex answer, the market is driving how cementitious polymers and other chemicals are sold and profits maximized through the supply chain.

Barefoot Concrete lives by its values, the primary one being simplicity, therefore we focus on polymer concentrates that primarily benefit the applicators business.

Applicators, like Martin Hudec from Concrete Culture, who use our polymers will attest to the fact that our polymers are pure, concentrated with a high solids content and the best that he has used. You are welcome to call him and ask him yourself!

So, why use a polymer concentrate? Some of the answers are simple, like saving space on your truck or on your shelf in a trade supply store, or massive product savings on jobs.

Let’s use an example; if you have a big job needing 5 x 20L pails, and you are also carrying your other products and gear for the job, you only need one of Barefoot Concrete’s 20L pails to make the same 5 x 20L of product you need for the job, saving space.

Trust me, I know how full a tradie’s van or truck is when they pick up products from us, the vehicles are always full, they need every inch of space!

Secondly, let’s talk about the price, based on the above example you may buy a neat water-based sealer for $350 that typically will seal 100m2. For all intents and purposes, that’s a product cost of $3.50/m2.

Or, using the same example, you can buy a concentrated water-based sealer for $450 from Barefoot Concrete. You may say it costs nearly double, this is true, but if you do the math, this is the real value, as it will actually cost you half. If our concentrated sealer does up to 450m2, and you dilute it 1:3, then the product cost for 100m2 is $1.40/m2.

Or, look at it this way. If you had a 400m2 job to seal, and you were using a neat product, you would need 4 x 20L of product at $350/ea = $1,400. Your cost is still $3.50/m2.

Or, you can use 1 x 20Kg bucket of concentrated polymer, which will make 80L of product and easily seal the 400m2, and your cost would be $1.58/m2.

So, let’s bank this, if you charged the customer $10/m2 for the job, that’s $4,000. If you used our concentrated polymer, you would save $1.92/m2 (the difference between $3.50/m2 and $1.58/m2). That goes straight to your profit! Using our concentrated polymer on a $400/m2 job puts an extra $768 in your pocket. Now that’s real $$$ value!

Let’s say you did 400m2 of sealing work per month, at the end of the year, you would have saved $768 x 12 = $9,216. That’s profit from just being product smart!

The bottom line is this, you make more money per job using Barefoot Concrete’s polymer concentrates.

Thirdly, all product comparisons come down to one simple factor, the solids content. Most trade stores don’t even know the solids content of the products they sell.

Most suppliers don’t publish this because they don’t want you to know! All they want is for you to keep buying more and more products, that’s what keeps them in business.

Barefoot Concrete works differently, we want to make you, the applicator, more competitive and to stay in business, and become more profitable! 

You may say, what’s the catch? There isn’t any! We live by a simple philosophy that the more we help our customers succeed the more successful we will be! We know you will be back, just try it out. Our business model is mutually beneficial, we deliver massive value!

We make it really easy for an applicator to calculate the cost of a job and by way of comparison, you will see that it’s more cost-effective to buy a polymer concentrate than a neat polymer.

Let’s get back to the solids content, it’s the elephant in the room for most suppliers, but not for Barefoot Concrete, we will give you this info, we publish our solids content in all our polymer product documentation.

You may ask, what’s the key difference between product A and product B and how do I know? The key is it’s all in the solids content of the product. This tells you exactly how much polymer product is in the pail and how much water. Our solids content range from 46-54%.

Typically, when you buy a neat product, there is just enough polymer in the product to perform according to specification. One of the complaints I get from tradies who say the products are so thin, like water, and when they find Barefoot Concrete, we usually hear them say that they opened the lid of the product and can see how thick it is, they know they are buying pure, undiluted concentrate!

Simply put, you can dilute high solids, thick concentrate, you cannot make a thin product thicker, it doesn’t work that way. This gives my applicators more flexibility and control on adjusting the ratio to suit the job at hand.

We all know the saying that one shoe doesn’t fit all, this is definitely the case with diluted or neat products. A diluted product cannot be expected to perform the same on all substrates!

However, with Barefoot Concrete polymer concentrates, you can use dilute from as low as 1:3 to as high as 1:8, depending on the system and application process. You are in control to determine the formula that gets the result as you adjust the product ratio for each job.

This comes from experience and testing and learning from fellow tradies who do the kind of work you do. You can become an expert! You can leverage the polymer concentrates by adding the water as needed for the specific system you are applying. Changing to polymer concentrates will cost you less, as in the example above.

We are here to help you, you are welcome to call us and discuss your requirements and we will do our best to find a solution to exactly meet your needs. Call us today, you will benefit in a number of ways from using one of our high-quality, high-solids, concentrated polymers.