Asheboro Zoo Playground: Aliphatic Clearcoat
MARKET: Decorative Coatings
SYSTEM: Aliphatic Clearcoat
PROJECT: Playground Equipment re-paint / decorative coating
OWNER: Zoo / Aquarium, Asheboro, North Carolina
CONTRACTOR: Safe Step, Inc.
Danny and Kelly Cook of Safe Step found an intriguing use for VersaFlex polyaspartic ClearCoat. The North Carolina Zoological Park, in Asheboro, has a children’s playground that is delightful accumulation of large-scale vegetables and fruits. The features are made of steel and are painted to match their real-life counterparts. Purple grapes, yellow squash, green leaves, and other individual produce all have variegated color schemes. These features host between five hundred to 2000 kids every day the park is open, and that is just about every day of the year.
As you might imagine, all those little hands and feet crawling over the features, repeatedly wore the paint, and the sun caused the high-grade polyurethane to chalk very quickly. Once or twice a year the playground had to be closed in order to refinish the features. That was until Danny proposed using Aliphatic ClearCoat on the playground equipment.
Over a period of several weeks, the “Safe Steppers” blended test samples for color match. Once satisfied, they showed the samples to Park management. A contract to re-paint the features was issued to Safe Step. In March of 2002 the project was begun and finished in time for park opening. That was the last time the features were painted. As of June 2003 a one square foot area on the slide, which is the most used giant green and yellow leaf you have ever seen, needs repair. This initial contract has led to numerous others in the Park for Safe Step.
