The biggest whopper I have ever heard is that water based is harder than two pack polyurethane. What a load of rubbish. Massive fail. It just isn't even close to being true. How did that rumour get started? Well 20 years ago water based was such a fail of a product, that they had to invent tests to make it look resonable. So someone invented a taber test. In my personal opinion, that test is not real world applicable. A taber test is they take an extemely small disc of sand paper and put it on the end of a drill and count how many rotations of that drill occur until the sand paper breaks through the coating.
Now it takes more revolutions to break through the chewing gum, clogging water based coating, than it does for the nice powdering up two pack polyurethane. All this confirms is that water based is terrible to sand off. I can confirm this as it is a major part of our work, following around the water based companies, and sanding off floors of which the owners are unhappy and too embarrassed to say anything to the water based companies.
Yes, they feel somewhat foolish that they believed the water based was as good. Its so far from the truth its not funny.
Now this is the bit that annoys me.
It offered virtually zero protection to your floor. It was so soft, that it barely lasted months. So something had to be done. Every 6 months a new one was released. Claiming to be bigger, better and stronger than the last. But it was still way to soft and never lasted.
So eventually they started to add percentages of polyurethane. You know that evil stuff they have run down for years, saying how poisonous it was. They added more and more. 18% then 25%, and then 45%. Then finally they started having something that had some sort of durability. Buy not as much as 100% polyurethane.
Now what happened to Our NON TOXIC water based? No one uses it, but they keep sprouting about it. Its sort of like the old car ads. They show you the top of the line model, but sprout a from price of $30,000 (in reality the car shown is the $60,000 model).
Water based users talk about the non toxic product, but then talk about how hard the one they use is. (The hard one isn't the non toxic one.)
But it gets worse. They needed something that truely was almost as hard as the two pack. So they invented a special hardener to go into the water based. This additive is so deadly poisonous it's not funny. We use two pack polyurethane everyday without any protective equipment at all. Just like my family has for over 50 Years with zero health problems. But that water based hardener scares the living daylights out of me.
There you have the cold hard truth about water based. The true Non Toxic one is way too soft for anyone to use. The one that is almost as hard, (they will argue it is just as hard) is even more poisonous than the Two Pack Polyurethane.
Back to the real world. We got tired of architects being told these non truths. So we setup a real world test. We put three sheets of ply across a major shopping centre floor. Then barracaded them so that every single person that walked into the centre had to walk accross them. We estimated 10,000 people per day walked across these sheets of ply.
One was coated with two pack polyurethane. (Wattyl 7008). One was coated with a single pack polyurethane. And the third was coated with the new and improved, harder than two pack polyurethane (Supposedly as sprouted by the Rep.) a two pack water based product. I won't name it as I am not trying to harm water based companies, just test the truth.
So two weeks passed and the architect and the water based Rep, and myself met back at the Test area. I was last to arrive. I saw the look on the architects face, and I just smiled.
I think he wanted to throw his arms around me and kiss me for telling him the truth.
He couldn't believe his eyes. Actually I couldn't either. The water based panel looked 100 years old. It looked like there was nothing on it at all. It was terrible. The rep tried in vein to point out a big black mark on the two pack sheet. I smiled, bent over, wet my finger, and wiped off the big black rubber mark and the coat was PERFECT. Then I looked at his black rubber shoes and smiled. (I don't know if it was him that tried to kick a big scratch in it, but who ever it was failed.) The single pack was suprisingly almost as good as the two pack.
There was very little difference. The architect went for two pack polyurethane. It has been around the longest because it has stood the test of time The real world test, time. It is the cleanest, clearest, hardest , strongest and prettiest.
One last point I would like to make. Did you know that your colour television emits radiation? If you are in your 40's or Older, you may remember black and white TV. Then when Colour was introduced to the market, you had all these stories on don't sit too close because they emit radiation and it will kill you. True story. You don't hear that story today.
But I bet the massive screen plasma's emit 100 times more radiation than those did? However 100 times nothing is virtually zero.
A storm in a tea cup. That is what off gassing is. An insane idea, to try to discredit a tried and proven product. If you are worried about getting radiation poisoning from your colour television, than yes perhaps you should be worried about your floor off gassing. But don't forget about your carpet, and heaven forbid the paint on your walls!
All other sane people need not worry. Disclaimer.......Please do not hold your eyeball one inch from your colour television for 50 Years straight, 24 hours a day as that may actually cause radiation blindness.
Does Water Based have a Non Toxic Product? Yes, but it is too soft for floors.
Does Water Based have a Hard Product? Yes, but its not the Non Toxic one above.
Conclusion : Two Pack Polyurethane is still the best product on the market.
Until they make something that is better, I shall continue to use it.
One more myth debunked. It is not banned in Australia, or by the Government. We still use it on Government jobs all the time.
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