Preparation Decides How Long Rubber Surfacing Lasts
Rubber surfacing fails for one reason far more than any other, and that is a base that was not ready. Rubber poured over old sealer, paint or a dusty, damp slab has nothing to grip and comes up in sheets. Rubber spread too thin wears through. Rubber laid across a live crack splits right along it.
So day one goes to the base. It gets pressure washed or ground down to bare material, every live crack gets cut and filled, the slab gets a moisture test, and then the primer goes on. In this city that matters more than usual, because the older slabs south of King Street sit on old lakebed clay that stays damp, and the winter along the lake crosses zero over and over. A rubber surfacing job that skips the prep does not survive that.
EPDM And SBR Are The Two Granules We Pour
Two granules make up all of the rubber surfacing we pour. The one you see on a pool deck, on a patio or capping a playground is EPDM, a virgin rubber that carries its colour right through the granule and holds it in sunlight. Under that, or alone on a garage or gym floor where black suits, is SBR, which is ground-up tires: black, springy and the cheaper of the two.
Holding the granules together is a polyurethane binder that comes in two types, aromatic and aliphatic. The aromatic one is cheaper and works fine on dark colours or in shade. Aliphatic is the pricier of the two and it will not yellow under sun, which is why it goes on the quote for any pale colour that bakes all summer. Granule and binder are both written on every quote we send, so what is going down is never a mystery.
Where Oshawa Rubber Surfacing Works
Rubber surfacing jobs take us to every part of the city. The post-war bungalows of Lakeview, Vanier and Centennial with their thin, salt-pitted garage slabs. The split-levels of Eastdale, Donevan and McLaughlin with pools and patios backing onto the creek ravines. The newer streets of Windfields, Kedron, Northglen, Pinecrest and Taunton with pool decks that are only a few years old but already slick. The horse farms and acreages toward Columbus and Raglan.
East of Townline Road, we pour the same rubber surfacing in Courtice, Bowmanville and the rest of Clarington on the same terms.
How A Rubber Surfacing Price Is Arrived At
Rubber surfacing is sold by the square foot, and four things push that number up or down: how big the area is, how deep the pour is, which granule and binder go in, and how much work the base needs first. Around Durham Region a deck, patio, step or garage tends to come in at $8 to $16 for every square foot laid over the slab you have, while a playground, poured several times deeper, sits at $15 to $30 a square foot or above. Below a certain size, a minimum charge applies.
Coming out to look is free. What comes after is a quote on paper: the granule and binder, the depth, the square feet, the prep the slab needs and the total, with the prep spelled out because the prep is what makes or breaks the pour. That total is what the invoice will say.