Hello guys Kirk and Jay here, with Kirk Giordano plastering,
Today what I want to do is I want to talk a little bit about Weld Crete, why, because I've done a couple videos way in the past when was
in 2011 and somebody commented about my use of Weld Crete, first of all, let me explain a
little bit of background now I've been in the trade since the late 70s in early 80s I was
Union and everywhere where we used Weld Crete for adhering color coats, we diluted it a little bit.
On the cans, it says do not dilute, and that is because Weld Crete is actually engineered for going over sealed or painted surfaces.
You put about a half-inch of stucco on that it has a lot of other uses, like mainly, concrete to concrete and you always go full strength when you do that
also, keep in mind I'm going to show you a color coat, a color coat is an eighth of an inch thick.
Now if you're doing an eighth of an inch thick of color coat and you have what I've done here
I got a piece of sheetrock and then I got a piece of this, wonder board or the cementitious board.
I'm not certain what kind it is. I sealed it, that is I painted it with a bonding agent to prove a point.
I'm going to show you something that I tell folks about the color coats. When I use a Weld Crete, I'll dilute it a little bit sometimes I'll go half and a half sometimes, two parts of weld Crete to one part water. I use my own judgment.
This is what I do you. If you watch what I do, follow whatever it says on the can.
So you don't say well, Kirk, told me to do this or that.
I'm showing you what we've been doing for 35 years in the trade every contractor I work as stucco contractors, I know about 15.
They do something similar if not exact but again I'll tell you the difference between these later, I also like this quikrete they wrote the book on stucco materials they sell every stucco known to man.
This one here is Sika products. It's these two. This one is really not for what I'm intended, but people ask me about it, it's more for a slurry or an additive.
Say you mix some stucco in it and you put this in it seals and it makes it more adhesive, It's designed mainly for making tile grout stick better you add it instead of water.
Getting back on this one here this one is great, it's very similar to this, Weld Crete,
that we have been using it for over 30 years.
Why because you can put this on and within an hour you can apply your cement or your stucco or your color coat, and it lasts for about 10 days prior to its use.
This bonding agent will adhere, so what I'm going to do, guys, I'm going to start with a little bit of diluted Weld-Crete.
Now okay we're going to do this bottom piece here now this is over a sealed surface, now that's what
I like to see it's a light blue, guys I'm putting it over the sealed surface
I'm putting it over the cementitious board.
I'm also going to do the piece of sheetrock here that I painted with the bonding agent, Okay there's that that's a can,
I just opened and added some water just to prove a point.
Now, this is a new can of weld Create, so it's a little darker blue now something to remember, I get some of this moisture out of here, and mix this up a little bit more.
The more you mix it turns the darker blue. Something to keep in mind guy as far as applying a
stucco color coat onto a painted surface there's a reason why if we put it too blue and the house is painted very well why it'll spider check it has something to do with Weld Crete, it must be diluted for this purpose.
It has to do with us, what I'll get into in a second which is well dry in time, Okay this is heavier than this now if you take a house that's is 100 years old it already has 20 coats of paint on and some of those
coats are extremely quality paints.
Now you paint full strength, Weld-Crete on it, and keep in mind.
I'm referring to a color coat 1/8 of an inch thick, 1/8 of an inch thick. Everything on that can is for 1/2 inch or more like concrete to concrete.
They don't mention color coats. However, this is well known in the plastering industry what I'm about to show you.
Okay now this is heavy, this is diluted these two are diluted, and again this is the sheetrock and this is just cementitious board.
I tell folks this is what I do, and I was hired by a fella in Tiburon, he was a fireman, he said gee, Kirk, can I save some cash and do something?
The average stucco color coat about starts around 10 grand and that includes pressure washing the house, then applying the bonding agent.
Then color coating the home, stucco color coats adhere to the bonding agents they won't adhere to a painted surface and while I'm talking about adhering nothing adheres to dust, dirt or a mossie surface.
Nothing.
None of these products here will stick to a dusty surface.
Folks so it's got to be clean, anyway getting back to the firemen in Tiburon, I said okay man, get yourself a gallon or get two gallons of this Weld-Crete to throw 1/2 gallon of water in each can and apply it lightly to the house.
And I'll credit you back the cost for what it would take us to do that. Then when I came to the house it was dark blue, what does that mean?
It looked like this can, and I looked at it, I thought dude what's that about? I told you two gallons and one gallon to dilute the Weld Crete.
He says, well I want to make sure it adheres.
I said, man, you put it on so thick that if we applied a half-inch or an inch. It would adhere, but now you over-sealed it because you applied too many coats or applied it full strength.
You overpainted it on, thus if I apply a stucco color coat, an eighth of an inch it will spider crack.
the wall no longer has the absorption then it'll dry by the outside air and when the outside air dries it and
which will take a long time. It'll spider crack or spider check, if we now apply the stucco color coat.
I tell people to let me do the bonding agent and I also had it the other way too I worked for a fella for
many years and he said, Kirk, what can I do to help, and I thought, dang, there's that question
again. I said alright man, have your guys apply it and I explained to him how they should do it.
I got there with my crew and I couldn't see it.
I thought I told you to apply the Weld-Crete, he says we did, and I thought man If I can't see it, then I've got to apply another coat because I can't risk the stucco color finish coming off.
And having you conveniently forget that I told your guys to apply it. Anyway, to make a long story short I don't allow it anymore, If folks say gee what can I do to help? I say stand back watch just do it, that's all the
the help we need, so what I'm going to do guys is, I got to let these set when this one dries it's
going to be dark blue this these took in the dark blue, this is what I actually want and
guys, I've rolled this stuff on. I've shot it on with airless, I've used brushes a lot of ways
to do it.
We'll get into that well what I'm going to do is I'm going to let these set I figure in an hour, it's going to be a pretty hot day. I mean yesterday it was 100 degrees, it's about noon it's
cloudy so as soon as the sun comes up it's going to dry this out, when we get to that next stage, I'm going to put some color coat on it and then we're going to do that exact same thing where we wait on it, while I'm getting this in my head, let me tell you another story.
These products and there are about 10 bonding products if you guys go to various parts of the country or various hardware stores, where they say you can add this in the material.
What they are referring to is, if you mix a little slurry and you put the coat on the wall, you can do it that way.
I've had many people say, Kirk, I'm going to put a gallon in my cement mixer and eight, 100-pound bags, I tell them all it will fail off within six months of being applied! The stucco finish is going to come off your house in sheets!
Have I seen that happen?
About 20 times so don't put bonding agents in the material unless you're doing a slurry and you're going to just put a little patch and fix something, but on a whole house on a color coat eight bags it will dilute any of these products to uselessness, of course, you couldn't put blue in a colored mix od stucco anyway. Nor add the white, Quikret in the stucco mix!
I've actually had a few guys call or write me and say you're right and the company's wrong, I said well
no the company's right.
if they say something, but the method you're talking about is not for a stucco color coat, we are talking about a color coat on a house. Now we do a lot of maintenance-free finishes that
means, instead of painting the house, we pressure wash put a bonding agent on the walls, then we apply a maintenance-free finish coat.
An eighth of an inch thick, when I mention a maintenance-free finish, which means it lasts forever.
It doesn't come off, the colors start to fade in 30 to 60 years, but it continues to hides all bad finishes and things of that nature anyhow I'm going to go ahead and let this set because I got a lot of other things we're
doing.
we'll come right back to this and apply this finish. We are at the stage that these are drying it's been a good hour or longer.
I put a little bit of color in this color coat just to so you could possibly see it better.
Now what I'm doing is I'm using the material, which is called La Habra finish coats.
It is is a color coat guys and its sand grit is 20/30. Not smooth and it's not heavy so this is the medium sand grit, that's all I need to do right there, I'm going to point out guys if,
you're ever considering this, I'm just going to put this right here because I can use this is over
sheetrock which has a lot of suction, this has a whole lot of suction these won't spider check.
Because it's designed for that again all of these bonding agents, you use them others according to
what their description says on their cans or bottles.
They will not fail, the reason we get spider checking is again, because of the moisture being trapped it can't suck in, if the stucco can't suck in it has to dry from the outside
therefore it'll spider crack. Plus the bonding agent was applied full stretch which caused further spider checking. Well, we're done with this demonstration.
Jay is going to take his handy-dandy camera there and zoom in now.
This I'm just going to do on all of them like a sand finish, why sand finish?
Because if I do a sand finish it'll dry out a lot faster than say the trowel finish, because the sand is able to breathe, I'm taking the outside air, I'll hit this just for the heck of it and here and
I'll show this to you see how fast that sucked up because this is over the cementitious board.
If this is dry already, that because it's dry because it's the moisture has already been sucked out onto this board.
If I was on a house I'd hose it down and hydrate it, then have the stucco finish hydrate together as one.
This is still wet because it's on sheetrock, these are going to stay wet, this one's going to stay
wet for quite a while because this is painted on full strength, this is diluted so
we'll come back when the time comes to see what it looks like. I want to express once more that
these bonding agents, if you're applying a stucco color coat do not put them into a mixer just my tip to you!
Guys if you do add it to the mix, it'll come off in sheets, I had bid a house for a color re-surface, it was on a river and I thought what a
cool place to work, we can view the water and have fun applying, like on a beach. I bid their stucco re-finish at 7,000 dollars, they called me back a couple weeks later and said, Kirk, we got another bid of 6,500 dollars? I said okay, cool,
you were too far for me any way you're two hours from my house, I bid it that low to be on
the river anyway.
Six months later, she called me back and says the new color finish was peeling off in sheets!
I explained, either they applied the bonding agent over a dirty surface or they put the bonding agent in the mixer, you cannot do either.
This poor woman says, the other plastering contractor did add it to the mixed color coat cement and they showed it to me, it says on the can, it can be added to the mix. Well, that means something different.
It doesn't mean put a gallon of this or even ten gallons in a mixer with 800 pounds of stucco circulating or mixing, then try to put on an eighth of an inch thick on a wall and expect it to adhere?
Don't do it guys anyway let's see what this does. Jayson and I got a bunch of other crap we got to do and we'll come back to this and take a look at it.
All right guys were back, let me conclude this test. There's, what we started off with. So dark that is wet, FYI, cementitious finishes always dry lighter, this one is permanent it didn't
need a bonding agent it sucked into this cementitious background, this one will come off because
it doesn't have a bonding agent. This one here is permanent, and so are these. They are all permanent here because they have the bonding agent now. Yeah, even though it's over a cementitious board it
was painted plus the Weld Create.
Wow, this looks like the Amazon River if you go close, it really looks like the Amazon.
Jason, can you zoom in on this one that looks like the Amazon River would I come up with that my girl just walked in the backyard she says, oh those look cool those look indeed, like the Amazon River.
Now that's not what people want, though anyway. To get back on this, the weld crete is easily one of the strongest liquid bonding agents I've ever
encountered I know at least 20 licensed plastering fellas, guys who all have 30 years and they say the same thing it's one
of the strongest bonding products.
The thing is I thought was there's a chemical reaction also because it's so incredibly strong this bonding agent it's made to hold an inch of stucco to a half-inch on a house.
or a vertical wall it can do it, so between the air coming on the outside and drying it out and
between the chemical composition of it, you know, ole Kirk, is an applicator guy I don't know much about electricity but I know I can flick a switch and make the lights come on or tune them off.
I don't know much about the engineering of this resin-based type of bonding agent but I'm sure
some of you guys do.
Do any of you folks have opinions? of why this is so incredibly strong let me know.
Lastly, I'll just say that if I was Larson's the makers of Wel Crete, I would not put in the description as far as color coats go. Why, because if I tell somebody this
is what I do.
Anyway, don't do what ole Kirk does because I don't want anybody to call me and say, gee, I tried your method it didn't work that's not what this is about if Larson's can be diluted guess what people would do? They would dilute it to nothing, or they wouldn't know how to bond the rest of the wall.
So you look at a wall, not wall sealed they wouldn't be able to determine how many coats the paint does
that has on it, to determine the right amount of Weld Crete, so that's something that's kind of off
limits for Weld Crete, and it's off-limits with me too. But because somebody said I
was trying to save money by diluting it I thought don't be crazy you don't save any money if you got
to go back and redo a wall that's like putting a five to one sand ratio with cement. If we use five times the amount of sand to save money. of cement. You don't save any money if that wall falls down. That would cost anyone a fortune to repair it again. So I do not dilute this to save money I dilute it because I know what I'm doing and every job is different so you guys do what's on the label and most of you homeowners
and you do it yourself guys call a licensed plastering contractor if you're going to do a color coat because that's
just the tip of the iceberg on stucco color coat applications. There are so many different things that could
blow a job so anyway guys my name is Kirk I'm with Kirk Giordana plastering, and my lovely girlfriend she's out
here all the time, this is her garden, that I'm messing up, this is and you didn't even mention
that you spelled weld Crete
Anyway, my name is Kirk Giordano with Jason on the the camera we thank you for watching and as usual.
We'll see you on the next one.
Once again folks we thank you for watching,
and I really enjoy all your comments
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My name is Kirk and Jason we thank you for watching and from the entire Giordano family we'll see on the next one.