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66 SEPTEMBER 2015 COATINGSPROMAG.COM PHOTOS COURTESY POLYCOAT PRODUCTS AND TRINIT Y WATERPROOFING BY CLAIRE TRAGESER What Lies Beneath: Polyurethane Recoat for a Parking Garage n a recent job in a suburb of Seattle, Wash., Philip Brenchley and his crew from Trinity Waterproofng learned that it's what's under- neath the surface that really counts. Brenchley was hired to do a remediation on fve buildings and a parking garage at Camelot Apartment Homes, a condo complex in Everett, which is about 30 miles (48.3 km) north of Seattle. But there was no King Arthur, no Lancelot, and no knights of the round table in this place. Instead, there were 500 units, each with its own deck, 5 court- yards, and a 28,000 square foot (2,601.3 m²) parking garage. "Tis is a remediation job, so it's an existing building, and we go in and replace all the siding and windows and doors as needed," Brenchley said. "Part of that work is to replace all the waterproof decks, courtyards, and parking garages, so it's basically an update." Brenchley's company, Trinity Waterproofng, is based in Mountlake Terrace, Wash., and has 22 employees total. He used a team of 12 crew members on this job. Te Trinity Waterproofng crew was hired as a subcontractor to work for general contractor Charter Construction, which has ofces in Seattle and Portland, Ore. Te Trinity team had a big job ahead of them. "It's fve buildings. Each building has 100 residential decks that have urethane coating," Brenchley said. "Tey have one courtyard that's about 6,000 square feet [557.4 m²]. We refer to it as a green roof; it's a coating that would go underneath soil and grass, but it's technically the roof of the garage." And the biggest part of the job was that garage. Unfortunately, when Brenchley started, he had no idea just how big that job would be. Under the "Hood" Before the Trinity crew began work, the general contractor did a mockup in the back corner of the garage. Tey shot blasted the corner, "and it didn't look that bad," Brenchley said. But it turned out that wasn't quite indicative of the rest of the garage " because it was in the back corner where there was no trafc," he said. "So everything was approved to move forward, and then they did the rest of the garage, and we came out to start our work, and we nearly couldn't do anything with how bad it was." Once the dirt was cleared away, Brenchley realized he was dealing with a far bigger job than he had anticipated. "Te dirt and grime over 20 years of use really covered up how bad it was," he said. "W hen we bid the job, we bid it as a standard system. We looked at it and go, 'Yeah, there's 1,000 feet [304.8 m] of cracks. We can deal with that, that's not abnormal.' But once they shot blasted it, it revealed that there were 10,000 feet [3,048 m] of cracks, not 1,000 [304.8 m]." When Brenchley saw what the job would really be, "I thought, 'Tis isn't something we're going to do,'" he said. "Tis isn't something the system is designed for, and we did not have in our bid to spend two weeks chasing cracks and trying to remedy the cracks." FLOOR POLYURETHANES CONCRETE