Resurfacing the floor and ceiling of a beer filtration room with Flowfresh Urethane Concrete helped a microbrewery significantly save on maintenance costs. Installer Greg Hardig of E.B. Miller Contracting, Inc in Cincinnati faced “our toughest job ever,” a job that included resurfacing a 35 ft high ceiling amid a maze of tanks and pipes.
Home of Sam Adams
As one of the world’s original microbreweries, the Boston Beer Co has played a significant role in the craft brewing revival of the last two decades. With brewing facilities in Boston and Cincinnati and an annual production of 1.2 million barrels, the Boston Beer Company is best known for its flagship product, Samuel Adams® Boston Lager.
The Cincinnati brewery underwent a $6.5 million expansion project in 2005, adding new lagering and aging tanks, a storage cellar, and two new custom-made copper brew kettles. The project also included installation of Flowfresh RT on thousands of square feet of fresh (or “green”) concrete poured for the new facility’s walkways and base floor by flooring contractor E. B. Miller Contracting, Inc.
Flowfresh RT is a non-slip, heavy-duty rake and trowel urethane concrete that, in addition to being chemical resistant, includes built-in antimicrobial Polygiene®, which inhibits growth of bacterial odors and guards against degradation from microorganisms. Because it has the same coefficient of expansion as concrete, Flowfresh RT withstands extreme thermal shock, allowing it to tolerate sudden temperature changes without cracking or delaminating from the concrete surface.
Developed by Flowcrete PLC and available in North and Central America from Valspar Flooring, Flowfresh floors combine the most demanding performance characteristics -- resistance to impact, abrasion, aggressive chemicals/acids, and thermal shock.
These advantages made Flowfresh RT the right flooring choice for the expansion. In fact, assistant brewing manager Todd Roseman was so impressed with Flowfresh’s performance that when it came time to refinish the original brewery’s aging filtration room, he again turned to E. B. Miller Contracting and Valspar Flooring.
“The older section of our brewery has the unique heritage, pride, and tradition that characterizes Samuel Adams beer. However, we wanted it to share in all the state-of-the-art production capabilities found in the expansion,” said Roseman. “Resurfacing the floors, walls, and ceiling of the filtration room was an important part of achieving that goal and showed the pride-of-ownership employees feel as part of the Boston Brewing Company.”
Next Stop: Filtration Room
Filtration, the last step in brewing beer before packaging, filters out the remaining yeast that would otherwise leave it cloudy and unappetizing. As a rule, filtration rooms are hot and steamy, making them the perfect environment for mildew and mold growth. The Sam Adams filtration room presented even more challenges: the room is between several others kept cold for production, a combined environment that created so much condensation it appeared to be “raining indoors.”
“The filtration room only measures 60 x 60 ft, so it sounded as if it was a small job at first,” explained Adam Jordan, technical sales representative, Valspar. “However, when I visited and saw the volume of coating removal that would be required, plus the brewing equipment the crews needed to work around, I quickly changed my mind.”
During the 6-day around the clock installation, the room’s tanks, pumps, piping and other equipment remained in place. E.B. Miller’s team set up “an amazing rigging job” that reached up the 35 ft high walls, providing 100% fall protection, along with a makeshift tunnel to give control engineers ongoing access to computers on the parameter walkway, said E.B. Miller’s Hardig.
“We had to remove the failing coatings from the floor, walls, and ceiling. Preparation was completed using sand blasters, scarifiers, needle guns, and demo hammers. Negative pressure was maintained using a 20,000 cfm dust collector with hepa filters. A half-inch of standard, non-Valspar epoxy, cracked from thermal shock resulting from moisture becoming trapped underneath, was completely removed from the floor. Build-up on the walls and ceiling was also sandblasted to sound substrate.”
On the floor pit area and walkway, E. B. Miller Contracting applied the SR version of Flowfresh for its heavy-duty durability, heat resistance up to 210°F, and superior slip resistance. Blue was selected to match Samuel Adam’s colors.
An Unusual Ceiling Choice
For the ceiling, Adam Jordan made the unusual specification of Flowfresh FC floor resurfacer rather than a conventional coating: “The exterior ambient temperature was bringing the dew point into play and the constant washdown of the yeast room located above the filtration room added concerns. As a result, the concrete ceiling had high moisture content, more than a typical coating would allow. I knew that Flowfresh FC with Polygiene would prevent mildew and odor-causing organisms from taking up residence in the coating.
“As maintenance crews tried to clean and treat the filtration room’s previous ceiling surface for mildew growth, they had to maneuver around both its 35 ft heights and the maze of pipes and tanks that block its accessibility,” Jordan continues. “Flowfresh FC with Polygiene minimizes this cumbersome and costly task.”
Notes Hardig: “The filtration room’s ceiling gets the brunt of the humidity, and probably more punishment than most industrial floors. No standard ceiling coating was going to work, so we went with the one thing that would, Flowfresh FC.”
Two coats of Flowfresh FC, a lighter duty coating with chemical and abrasion resistance, was carefully sprayed on with a large pump and gravity hopper. Its gray color highlights the room’s bright white walls and navy blue floor, creating an aesthetically pleasing work environment.
Assistant Brewing Manager Roseman is pleased with the results.
“As great as these high-performance, long-lasting coatings look in the filtration room, the real bottom-line benefit is the reduced maintenance requirements, which are yielding immediate savings. Washdowns are much easier to perform, especially for the ceiling, and because the floors resist abrasion, chemicals, and impact, we are not interrupting production for repairs or recoating.”