Abbotsford · Since 2001
Epoxy and industrial floor coatings in Abbotsford.
The Fraser Valley’s largest city: logistics floors along Mt Lehman Road, food and farm processing, strata parkades — and three of our own Abbotsford jobs.
Abbotsford
Wash-down rooms, cold rooms and the floors under them
Abbotsford has always leaned on agriculture — poultry, dairy and berries — and on the processing, cold storage and grocery that follow it. Those rooms put a floor through hot wash-down, cleaning chemicals, temperature swings and standing water, which is where a thin epoxy gives up and a cementitious urethane earns its place.
We know that duty from our own Abbotsford work. In 2013 we laid a high-performance cementitious urethane floor with a decorative quartz finish through the back-of-house prep room at Costco Abbotsford, spread by squeegee around the sinks, trench drains and stainless equipment, coved at the walls, while the service counters out front stayed sheeted over.
The other growth is logistics. New warehouse and light-industrial buildings have gone up along the Mt Lehman Road corridor beside the Trans-Canada, alongside the older industrial stock around Peardonville Road. Young slabs in new buildings carry construction moisture longer than most schedules allow for, so on those floors the moisture reading comes before the name of the system.
- Our Abbotsford work
- Costco · two parkades
- Industrial corridors
- Mt Lehman · Peardonville
- Also serving
- Mission · Chilliwack
Services
What we install in Abbotsford
Food and beverage floors
Wash-down-ready urethane cement for Abbotsford processing rooms and kitchens.
Learn more →Industrial floor coatings
Epoxy and urethane systems for Abbotsford warehouses, plants and shops.
Learn more →Parkade waterproofing
Traffic-bearing membranes for Abbotsford parkades, ramps and roof decks.
Learn more →Local conditions
Valley weather is not Vancouver weather
East of Langley the Fraser Valley loses most of the ocean’s moderation. In winter, cold arctic air drains down the Fraser Canyon and out across the valley floor, bringing outflow winds, hard frosts and the freezing rain and snow that Vancouver often misses. Exposed decks, loading aprons and parkade entrances in Abbotsford go through more freeze–thaw and more de-icing salt than the same detail downtown, so we specify deck membranes that stay flexible in the cold and treat ramp entrances as the heaviest-duty zone on the deck.
Water is the other local fact. Sumas Prairie, on the city’s eastern side, is the bed of the old Sumas Lake, drained a century ago, and it flooded in November 2021 when the atmospheric river overwhelmed the area. Low-lying slabs on the prairie and elsewhere on the flats can sit over a high water table that drives vapour up through any slab on grade. That calls for a moisture test first and a vapour-tolerant primer where the reading is high — not a thicker coat.
Up on the higher ground around Clearbrook and the city centre the question shifts from groundwater to age: where a building’s first coating or membrane is reaching the end of its life, the work is preparation and repair before anything new goes down.
Where the work is
A food-plant floor and two Abbotsford parkades
Our Abbotsford projects cover both halves of the city’s work. Besides the Costco prep room, we coated the exterior parkade deck of a strata building in 2011 — a textured traffic coating with aggregate blown in for grip and a grey top coat, carried from the storefront walkway to the planters — and laid a Tremco traffic coating across an underground parking level. How a parkade decision should be made is in the depreciation report guide; the systems for wash-down rooms are on our food and beverage floors page.
Costco, Abbotsford, 2013: the finished cementitious urethane floor with a decorative quartz finish through the back-of-house prep room (left), and the crew spreading it by squeegee past the trench drain (right). More on the projects page.
The exterior parkade deck of a strata building in Abbotsford, 2011: finished in a grey traffic coating (left), and aggregate blown by hose into the wet coat for grip (right). More on the projects page.
Questions
What Abbotsford clients ask us.
We run a food processing plant in Abbotsford. Epoxy or urethane?
If the floor sees hot wash-down, steam cleaning or swings between ovens, cold rooms and freezers, the answer is usually a cementitious urethane rather than an epoxy. Epoxy is hard and rigid, excellent under dry abrasion, but repeated thermal shock debonds it; urethane cement tolerates that duty. It is the system we installed in the back-of-house prep room at Costco Abbotsford, coved up the walls and carried into the drains.
Our warehouse is brand new. How soon can the floor be coated?
Not on a fixed date — on a moisture reading. A new slab holds the water it was placed with for months, and coating one that is still giving it up is the most common cause of early delamination in new buildings. We test the relative humidity in the slab and then choose between waiting, a moisture-tolerant primer or a system made for damp concrete.
Does the Fraser Valley winter change what goes on a parkade deck?
On exposed decks and ramps, yes. Abbotsford sees more frost, freezing rain and de-icing salt than central Vancouver, so we specify membranes that stay flexible in the cold, detail ramp entrances and drains more heavily, and plan exterior work for the part of the year when the deck and the weather allow it to cure properly.
Do you also cover Mission and Chilliwack?
Yes. Abbotsford, Mission and Chilliwack are all part of our Fraser Valley service area, worked from our North Vancouver base. Where a client has more than one building in the valley, we plan the site visits and the installations together.
Site assessments
Have a slab in Abbotsford you're worried about?
Photographs and a rough area are enough to start. We'll come out, test moisture, and scope it properly.
Main (604) 968-2040
Second (604) 230-0256
estimating@westpacificcoatings.com