Styles

Coloured Concrete
Coloured concrete is simply just that. It’s the alternate choice to stencil or stamped concrete, customers who make this choice tend not to like the look of stencil or stamped concrete or have had bad experiences in the past with other contractors or quite simply they are not aware of the upkeep required of decorative concrete.  It’s becoming more of a favourable choice.

This style is attractive and is a favourite for a lot of the stylish designer homes.  It has its own unique look that if the correct colour or colours are chosen looks fantastic. Usually when a similar colour to the house has been selected (not exact) but really is a preference for the owner and the look he/she is trying to achieve.

There are a few choices with this product both in application techniques and the finish given to the concrete surface:-

• Powdered oxide. This is thrown on top of the concrete and trowled into the surface, this used to be the only choice you had to colour up your concrete areas.

Finishes achievable are Trowel, Cove, Hit and Miss, Broom, Wood Float.

• Colour mixed through concrete. Is just that, colour mixed through all the finishes as above can be achieved.  There are 2 methods of having the colour mixed through the concrete, the first is the original and still most commonly used.  It is by the bag, normally a 9kg bag and there is one to two bags mixed through the concrete per cubic meter depending on the colour.  Normally this is mixed on site or at the plant, the colour is thrown in with the concrete in the truck, bag and all as these are degradable bags.

Now the other method of colour mixing through is liquid, this is only done by Hansen Concrete formally known as Pioneer Concrete, this is their system and it is mixed at the plant when concrete is batched, it is known

as Colour Master and thus has their own colour range.

Wet Spray Wet spray as mentioned earlier is a system of colour application, new to fresh concrete but the technique has been around a long time.

When the concrete is hard enough to walk on (without leaving footprints) is the correct time of application of this product which is applied with compressed air and a spray gun suited to its unique application using a selection of nozzle sizes and pressures. Different looks can be achieved within this style of finish to achieve outstanding results.

Plain Concrete

Gone are the days that this was your only choice of concrete style but some people still choose to have it as their driveway or patio, more common to have it up the side of the house as a footpath to save a few dollars and not have the problem of tracking mud and dirt into the house as well as one less area to mow.

As far as finish goes all the same as above pretty straight forward, those were the days when placing and finishing a driveway were a heck of a lot easier compared to nowadays where you are only limited by your

imagination.  As far as concrete is concerned though it still is and will remain the number 1 core component in construction worldwide.

Pebble Crete

Here’s another style of the past, Pebble Crete also known as Exposed Aggregate, Washed Concrete. Beautiful in its day but a thing of the past, this was the product that took the plain concrete world by storm and did lift the appearance of homes. Pebble Crete could be used in a variety of different coloured river stones used through the mix as the aggregate then the surface was washed off to reveal the aggregate it was a very strong concrete in its time.