Jack Aspenson founded S3 Surface Solutions in September 2015 and runs it as CEO. He has more than 35 years of experience in business development, technical sales and materials engineering, and he is the person contractors call when a floor over concrete starts to fail.
What he works on
His work sits where concrete meets flooring: moisture mitigation, substrate chemistry and the forensics of adhesive and coating failures. He consults on concrete problems and installation challenges, from reviewing mix designs and test data before a pour to working out why a floor let go a year after it went down.
S3 was founded at a turning point for the industry. Flooring adhesives were moving away from solvents, and ASTM had added portland-limestone cement (Type IL, ASTM C595) to the specifications in 2012. Both changes made slabs harder to bond to, and S3's products and guidance grew out of that problem.
The Ionic Dew Point framework
Jack originated the Ionic Dew Point (IDP) framework, a predictive approach to moisture at the slab surface. It treats the ionic dew point (the temperature at which brine condenses) and the critical relative humidity of soluble salts (CRH) as two distinct phenomena, rather than folding both into a single moisture reading.
White papers
Jack wrote the S3 Type IL white paper series, one for each trade that touches a Type IL slab:
- Type IL Cement: What General Contractors Need to Know About Finishing, Curing and Flooring
- Type IL Cement: What Architects and Specifiers Need to Know About Slabs That Receive Flooring
- Type IL Cement: What Flooring Contractors Need to Know Before They Bid and Install
The series is summarized in Type IL Cement and Flooring Failures.
Talks and interviews
- Build Our Future podcast, episode 38: Innovating Flooring
Contact
Email jack@s3surfaces.com or call (800) 933-7520. For a specific slab, send the mix design and project details through the free Type IL slab assessment.