CG HeatShield™ test report and application instructions

Technical detail from the test report and the installation instructions

CG HeatShield™ is the thermal finish layer of a two-product ceramic system. It is not a standalone coating. It goes on over a cured CeramycGuard™ surface and fuses with it, so the heat-tolerant face and the ceramic barrier underneath behave as one continuous material rather than a coating stacked on a coating. What the product is, what the coated surface does and where it is specified are all on the CG HeatShield product page. This page is narrower on purpose: it carries the two documents a specifier and an applicator need, the independent laboratory report and the mixing and installation instructions.

Where the layer sits

CeramycGuard goes on first. It bonds chemically to prepared concrete, forming an alumina-zirconia-silicate ceramic surface layer and sealing the pore network that lets water, chlorides and gases travel through a slab. Only once that layer is fully bonded, cured, clean and dry does CG HeatShield go over it. The instructions Zirconia issues make that the single acceptable substrate, and they require the CeramycGuard quality checks to be signed off before any CG HeatShield is even mixed.

The sequencing is the point, not a formality. A top coat that only sticks to the surface beneath it has one failure mode built in from day one: the bond line. Reacting the finish layer into a ceramic surface it is chemically compatible with removes that separate interface, which is the same reason CeramycGuard itself is described as thermally compatible with the concrete surface rather than as a film laid over it.

The measured thermal result: an SRI of 70

One thermal figure is published for CG HeatShield, and it was measured by an independent laboratory rather than modeled. Surface Optics Corporation of San Diego tested sample GT3746 and issued Job 7955-MP on 31 October 2024:

• Solar reflectance: 0.578
• Thermal emissivity: 0.951
• Solar Reflectance Index: 70.69, 70.36 and 70.07 at convection coefficients of 5, 12 and 30 watts per square meter per kelvin, which correspond to low, medium and high wind
• Methods: ASTM C1549 and ASTM E408, index calculated per ASTM E1980

Write it, and read it, as an SRI of 70. Solar Reflectance Index is an index on a 0 to 100 scale, not a percentage: ASTM E1980 anchors the scale to a standard black surface and a standard white surface, then places a tested surface between them from its reflectance and its emissivity. The fraction of sunlight actually thrown back is the separate measured value, 0.578. Older Zirconia copy printed this as a percentage. That wording is retired because it described something the laboratory did not measure.

What the number buys on a real asset is straightforward. Solar energy that is reflected is energy the slab never stores, and heat that is never stored is heat that does not drive expansion, thermal movement or the temperature of the space underneath. On a roof deck, a plaza or an equipment pad, that is a structural argument before it is an energy one.

Applying it

Part A settles out of solution as it stands, so the first job is to put it back into suspension: shake the can hard, scrape the bottom and sides for anything that has agglomerated, and mix until the dispersion is uniform with no clumping. A paint shaker is the recommended tool, and mixing the day before the pour of work is planned is the recommended habit. Catalyst is then added at 0.5 percent by mass weight and mixed in for about a minute.

Ambient and substrate temperature both need to be between 55 and 85 degrees F, with relative humidity between 30 and 85 percent. The material is remixed at low drill speed immediately before it goes down. Perimeters are cut in with a flat or bristle brush, then the field is rolled or brushed to a film thickness of 1 to 3 mils, working until hiding power is reached. Coverage varies with how porous the substrate is, so the thickness, not the gallon count, is what governs.

After application, shoe spikes are worn by anyone who has to cross the coating before it hardens. Water is kept off it for a minimum of 24 hours, and foot traffic and equipment stay off until it is fully cured. Temperature and humidity are worth logging through the cure window rather than eyeballed, which is why a data-logging temperature and humidity meter is recommended on site.

What these two documents do not settle

The laboratory report covers one thing, the reflectance and emissivity of the coated surface, and the instructions cover another, how the material is mixed and laid down. So two questions are deliberately left open here. We publish no blast performance figure for CG HeatShield, because we hold no blast test data for it. And we publish no service temperature rating, because the figure we stand behind in copy we write is the third-party tested one. If a service temperature is a specification requirement on your project, ask our technical team for the number that applies to your exposure, and expect the answer to name the conditions it holds under.