Alamodome

When you are planning to host 70,000 spectators, international and national television reporters, and top executives of major corporations over the course of several days, you want to look your best. In spring of 2018 the Alamodome in San Antonio will be hosting all of the above during the Final Four of the NCAA Division 1 Men's Basketball Tournament, and in preparation the City of San Antonio spent $60 million in renovations to the facility. These renovations included replacing 140,000 square feet of polished concrete floor with the Sikafloor DecoFlake and PurCem flooring products.

"The original polished concrete floor and poor lighting made the Alamodome seem dark and uninviting," remarked Matt Miller, business development manager at T.W. Hicks, Inc. of San Antonio, an Elite Level Sikafloor Installer. "So Alamodome explored different options for ways to dress up the arena for the Final Four." 

The design team originally pressed for thin mil coating systems or an MMA system for the new floor, but Miller, with the help of Steve Manchester, Sika's local flooring representative, showed them the distinct benefits of using a Sikafloor PurCem polyurethane concrete flooring system for durability and low maintenance; topped with the Sikafloor DecoFlake system for aesthetics. DecoFlake is an attractive, easy-to-clean, seamless flooring system consisting of a clear epoxy binder, broadcast with multicolor vinyl chips, and sealed with a transparent, UV stable topcoat. 

"We've done multiple jobs with Sika's DecoFlake system and we were the first in the United States to install the 24NA PurCem system," Miller explained. "We've had great results with both and continue to recommend them every day." 

Installing the new floor required as much planning as choreographing a ballet. “The floor was 140,000 square feet, and we were asked to install 10,000 feet of new flooring every week,” Miller said. All of this work was to be done while concerts, sporting events, conventions, and other activities took place in the Alamodome.

Miller said using Sika’s 250-gallon containers was very helpful.“We didn’t have thousands of yellow pails to work around and dispose of," he commented. “It made setting up mixing stations much easier because we didn’t have to move around 10 pallets of buckets.” He also pointed out that the bigger containers were more environmentally conscious. 

Today the floor is doing well, according to Miller. “It is wearing well and looks phenomenal,” he stated. “I would definitely use it again - in fact, we are going to be using the same flooring system on the Alamodome restrooms and seating entrances in 2018.”

Read the whole story on how Sika Helped the Alamodome stay in the game.