Someday they'll wonder what this is............

This is the concrete floor in the multipurpose room in the community conference center. While it will be covered with carpet, we're all amused by the prospect that some day, some carpet installer is going to pull the carpet up, see this and say, "Hey, what's that all about?"

We used the floor of the multipurpose room to test concrete stain colors for the lobby and other high traffic areas. Early on in the process of designing the building we decided that some of those areas would not get carpet.

Because of the volume of people we expect to come through the building (mostly to use the community conference center), we'd have to replace the carpet in those areas every two to three years. Not only is that expensive, it's not very environmentally responsible. I'll do a post on carpet later, but even fully recycled and fully recyclable carpet requires a lot of energy to produce, recycle and replace. And it's expensive.

So, after some arm twisting by the design team (I was a skeptic about the aesthetics) we decided to go with stained concrete. To be honest, I remained skeptical, but figured we could always cover it with carpet.

After looking at the samples above, the team picked a color (hard to see on this photo, but it's the darkest one). The lobby floor is stained and then a sealer is applied. The process is friendly to the building's air quality as there are no VOCs in the liquids. I'm told that about every decade or so, we might want to put another coat of the sealer (very inexpensive) down. I've seen the lobby and when you see it, I think you'll agree it's quite beautiful. I'm no longer a skeptic.

This is just one more example of how thoughtful design and materials selection is not only environmentally, but also economically, friendly.