Meet: Mo Bashar, founder of UBM Advanced Floor Care Systems
Rapid Set® user since: 2004
Products: Asphalt Repair Mix, Cement All®, Concrete Mix, CR Concrete Resurfacer, DOT Concrete Mix, LevelFlor®, Mortar Mix Plus, WunderFixx®

Describe your business.
I launched UBM Unlimited Building Maintenance in 2000 after supporting myself through college cleaning buildings. When I noticed my customers were bringing in other contractors to repair concrete, I created a division -- UBM Advanced Floor Care Systems – to become more valuable to customers. We restore floors and repair stairs, sidewalks, and other internal and external concrete in manufacturing plants, warehouses, colleges and universities, hotels and office buildings, train stations, and more.

With so many repair products to choose from, why do you use Rapid Set® products?
Fast return to service and convenience. We do same-day warehouse floor repairs, filling cracks and patching holes with Cement All® or Mortar Mix Plus. If we’re going to install, say, a TRU® PC polished concrete overlay on a formerly carpeted floor that’s next to a tile floor, we’ll elevate the old floor with LevelFlor® before applying TXP® Fast epoxy primer.

When reinforced concrete isn’t sealed, moisture gets in and causes freeze-thaw cracking. Mortar Mix Plus contains rust inhibitor, so we often use it to repair reinforced concrete in wet environments.

What differences do you see in Rapid Set® compared to other products?
We restore walls as well as floors, using WunderFixx® to make cinder block walls in university restrooms “pretty” by smoothing them. Because it’s moisture-tolerant, we also apply it for extra protection after cleaning walls. You can paint it, too. You could do all this the same day, but we usually come back the next day to sand it down and smooth it.

Has Rapid Set® helped your crew complete a project that another product couldn’t have?
We had a commercial building customer that had just placed new sidewalk and stairs – and it got stained with something that three power washings couldn’t get out.

We ground the surface to remove as much of the stained layer as possible without changing the slab’s elevation, vacuumed the surface to promote adhesion by removing dust, hosed down the surface, applied a thin coat of self-curing CR Concrete Resurfacer with a squeegee, and broom finished the surface. You don’t need any primer, just moisten the surface.

It was over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, so we increased working time by using ice cold mix water and adding SET Control® to the mix. We reopened the area after 3 hours.