Tuesday morning I hit the show around 930 am; large crowds were already in line to buy their passes. I quickly got my pass having registered before...it saves a lot of time!
Entering the South Pavilion, I went into the first floor.
First stop, UPI/Tufflex booth, where my partner in crawling the show, Dave DiBaggio, was talking with the head of the companies.
Their big announcement was that they had recently acquired Excellent Coatings, Inc of Vista CA. Excellent Coatings is a metal lath/concrete deck coating manufacturer. Their Fire System has an ICC One Hour Rated approval.
Consolidation of the industry's manufacturer's may have some interesting effects on the installer side...we'll see.
We met Multi-coat, where I saw their newish (1 year or so) metal lath and acrylic cement deck system that utilizes their instantly recognizable blue hued waterproofing membrane. The few questions I was able to ask got responses that it wasn't an ICC approved building/decking product in sum. I believe the membrane is a vapor trapping membrane so breathability is a concern. Soffit vents will be essential!
This is a big hall and just walking this alone is asking for a big time commitment. I hit a bunch of booths, ranging from moisture testing companies, to safety equipment, software, sealants, you name it, they are here!
As it got close to 12, Tremco's booth handed me a beer cup, pointing me outdoors to their display, where free drafts were waiting for us...we wandered around the decorative area outside, seeing Mira-Cote's guys do a stamping demo, Elite Crete's guys doing decorative overlays and every other concrete coatings, staining, overlay company represented too.
A stop over at the below grade waterproofing area yielded me my cherished cold one, and nourished me as I we went back for lunch at the hot dog booth.
A lunch with Ron Adams of Hill Brothers was enjoyed by us in the beer tent-italian and spicy sausages go great with beer!
Plunging back inside, I needed to see a software program I'd heard about that lets you do photoshop type stuff to show customers what their concrete might look like after you've redone it...
Westcoat wasn't too forthcoming about anything at their booth, they told me about their new epoxy that is 50% solids, it goes on at 1/4" thick and dries out to an 1/8"...
I did hear scuttlebutt from a contractor that I know who was walking the show that Westcoat staff is busy troubleshooting why their ALX system is experiencing water percolating through the coating system.
Somehow I missed the Excellent Coatings booth, and Pli-Dek was not here this year...
My last stop of the day was at the Life Deck by Life Paint booth, where I met Joe Devlin and several other members of the staff.
Decorative finishes is the big thing today; waterproofing is the secondary at this show for deck coatings. Wow factor is what sells and people apparantly will pay.
I picked up at Depiction software's booth their new Deco_Con V3.0 imaging software. This enables a contractor to take a picture of a clients eye-sore they want to fix up, and with a few mouse clicks, draw up a host of options to show their client on a laptop what their driveway or sidewalk could look like. Take advantage of their show special pricing...
Finally it was time to go, we hit the road back to LA and home at 4:30. I saw bed at midnight...
