[SunRescue] way offtopic: concrete stain!

[Greg A. Woods]

[ On Monday, October 2, 2000 at 08:27:10 (-0400), Ken Hansen wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: [SunRescue] way offtopic: concrete stain!
>
> Maybe the previous owners used the wrong paint, but if you look in my
> basment now, everything is resting on either a platic bag/sheet of bubble
> wrap, or on a piece of furniture.

Sounds like they used an ordinary wall paint -- maybe even (oh horror of
horrors!) a latex based paint!

Real concrete floor paint won't flake like that unless the surface
wasn't prepared properly and then it'll only generally do it in a few
places where the prep work wasn't ideal.  Even cheap floor paint (i.e.
the stuff that's only about $25[cdn]/gal) is not that bad, even on
50-yr-old concrete that's been painted many times!  :-)

Paint on a basement floor, even in a very dry climate (my Mom comes from
Southwest Saskatchewan, aka Palliser's Triangle, the most arid climate
in Canada, just one notch down the classification scale from being a
true desert), still needs to be quite moisture resistant.

One thing you find in a not-so-arid climate when you paint your
basement, especially if you paint it a non-grey colour, is just how many
of those "concrete bugs" you have!  (tough little spider-like creatures
that either come with their own concrete dust or gather it up and coat
themselves with it for *perfect* camouflage)

> Now, for my off-topic question, (well, it is *sorta* on topic) has anyone
> ever gotten a soda machine for thier home, the kind that dispense 12 oz
> cans? If I could get one that was signifigantly cheaper than a refigerator I
> would jump on it, since all my beverages come in 12 oz cans, and I really
> want to keep cold beverages in the basement.

Back when I did volunteer work for Rogers Cable community TV we did a
series on collectors (I almost went from being camera man to subject but
my PDP-11 collection isn't really all that impressive :-).  One guy we
featured was a CocaCola fanatic.  He had about three antique coke
machines (incl. one of those really cool old small-fridge-sized
mechanical ones that spit out the 6oz bottles too!), all in working
condintion IIRC, in his tiny basement (if we'd had a full Betacam I
wouldn't have been able to turn around full circle with it on my
shoulder without crashing stuff off the walls or shelves).  He said
they'd all been taken downstairs quite some time ago prior to his most
recent renovation which basically seemed to have permanently sealed them
into his rec-room.

Some of those collectors we visited were *way* more nuts than most
computer collectors I know!  :-)  The Coke guy and the guy with all the
keys were probably the most obsessive-compulsive of the bunch.

BTW, you should always keep your beverages on a different floor from
your hobby/work space -- you get more excercise that way!  :-)

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

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