Edumacate me about concrete coatings?

The concrete deck around our swimming pool is old enough to drink and showing its age. It shows multiple cracks and the Cooldeck coating that was applied years ago is coming up in some places.

Contractor #1 says the best thing is to break it up, haul it away and pour new concrete. In part due to site access obstacles his quote was roughly equal to the cost of 8 challenge cars.

Contractor #2 wants to patch the cracks, prep the surface and put this stuff down, which he swears will cure all of my ills, make my teeth whiter and move us all closer to world peace. He only wants 3 challenge cars.

Mrs. BDT is vetoing any DIY schemes, saying I have enough on my plate. True or not, if Mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy so I'm probably paying someone to do this. Total area is about 750 sq. ft.

Anyone have experience with this stuff?

I prepped, (as in acid etched), primed, and painted our back porch of maybe 200 sq. ft. It's worn off in a couple places after nearly ten years, but I was pleased with the result. It was a bit of work, but not bad really.

Are your cracks simply cosmetic in nature, or do they threaten the structural integrity of the concrete? If it's sound and isn't settling unevenly, I'd be tempted to keep it.

The rubber stone sounds very interesting since it would also be easy on the feet and not get so hot.

What I did was try real hard to break loose the cool crete then I simply put flat stone on top of it all. After 10 years I never had a stone come up and I only had to patch a few grout lines. Very few.

I've got my pool deck to do in the next few years and that looks interesting. I think you need that and report back.

If you're in a part of the country where rain gets into the cracks and then is exposed to temps below freezing, it's only going to get worse. If you're planning on being where you are for a long time -- I'd go option one. Cracking is only going to get worse. If you're only planning on being there for a few more years - option #2.

The analogy is a car with significant rust. You can try to clean it up, apply stuff designed to stop it and then cover it. But it almost always comes back through. Or - you can cut it all out and replace it.

I saw that stuff or something like it used on an episode of Homes by Holmes a while back - they used it to restore a concrete porch floor that was cracked and leaking water into the house's basement. It looked pretty good on TV, at least.

That rubber stuff looks like it could make a killer garage floor coating

Option one topped by option two? (I wouldn't let the Mrs. see this post if I were you)

yamaha wrote: Option one topped by option two? (I wouldn't let the Mrs. see this post if I were you)

It's been nearly a year since he posted, chances are they worked it out long ago.

Take a look at this link. We had the acrylic done to our front porch and our patio.

The front porch was done to look like slate 10 years ago and still looks like new. The patio was done 5 years ago in a brick pattern. Part of the patio was an old slab and part was new concrete to expand the patio.

First thing is a thorough cleaning and acid etching. Then the stuff goes on in 3 steps. First the base coat is troweled on then the joints are marked with strapping tape. Then the second coat is put on (troweled for the slate and sprayed for the brick). Then the tape is pulled up and a sealer(catalyst?) is sprayed on . When the sealer was put on I could see little bubbles coming up as it reacted with the coating.