A few days ago I was asked by a friend of mine to speak about a construction material which he is working on it. I need to improve my writing skills on English so I accepted, let’s start.
First of all, he’s from Spain, just like me, and he works on a material which there is called “hormigon impreso” that we translate as Stamped Concrete or decorative concrete.
What is stamped concrete ?
Well, this material has been known for about thirty years now and it still being a trending today because of its huge texture and color possibilities. Its resistance makes it able to be used on heavily used places like pavements or parks.
I’ve seek for some information and, as always, I’ve found that Wikipedia has a certainly good description:
Stamped concrete is concrete that is patterned and/or textured or embossed to resemble brick, slate, flagstone, stone, tile, wood, and various other patterns and textures. Stamped concrete is commonly used for patios, sidewalks, driveways, pool decks, and interior flooring. The ability of stamped concrete to resemble other building materials makes stamped concrete a less expensive alternative to using those other authentic materials such as stone, slate or brick.
There are three procedures used in stamped concrete which separate it from other concrete procedures; the addition of a base color, the addition of an accent color, and stamping a pattern into the concrete. These three procedures provide stamped concrete with a color and shape similar to the natural building material. It also is longer lasting than paved stone, and still resembles the look.
You needn’t to clean it or any kind of maintenance work and it’s quite cheap compared to other solutions. The difference between stamped concrete and normal concretes is that the first one is stamped with designs that mimic other surfaces and textures.
I wasn’t concerned about the possibility of building such designs on concrete. I’d also would like to say thanks to me friend (Pedro) for letting me know about this, if you’d like to know more about stamped concrete or how He says: Hormigon impreso, check his website.
There’re a huge number of possibilities available to choose from. You can certainly build some really rare compositions using this material. Normally the people choose textures which imitate wood or rocks, but I’ve seen crazy ideas on the internet like stamped photos.
Also I’ve checked some videos and I’ve found some of them quite interesting, here it’s an example!
I have to say that stamped concrete isn’t perfect and has its weakneses. It’s more expensive than normal concrete and despite being cheaper that some natural solutions, sometimes it doesn’t worth it.
I didn’t know anything about this material and I’ve to say that its quite interesting. I don’t know if I’m going to need to build something on a near time, but I would keep stamped concrete as an interesting option.