Sika Sika® Chapdur IN
A non-metallic dry-shake hardener that turns the top few millimetres of a fresh concrete slab into a dense, dust-free, abrasion-resistant wearing surface — trowelled in during the pour itself, not applied afterward.
What is it?
A one-part, factory-preblended powder of graded natural mineral aggregate, cement, admixtures and pigment, broadcast onto fresh concrete and trowelled in to create a monolithic hard-wearing topping.
Where is it used?
Warehouses, factory floors, shopping mall back-of-house areas, parking decks, service stations, and any slab that will see forklift, trolley, or heavy foot traffic.
Why use it?
It roughly triples the floor’s abrasion and impact resistance over plain concrete, kills surface dusting, and costs a fraction of a resin topping — without a separate cure period before the floor is usable.
How is it applied?
Sprinkled dry onto the still-plastic concrete in two passes (60% then 40%), power- or hand-trowelled into the surface, then water-cured — all on the same pour, by the crew that placed the concrete.
About Sika Sika® Chapdur IN
On most Indian warehouse and factory jobs, the floor is an afterthought until forklifts start chewing it up within a year. Sika® Chapdur IN exists to prevent exactly that, at the pour stage rather than as a repair job later. It’s a factory-preblended powder — graded natural mineral aggregate, cement, admixtures and pigment — broadcast onto the still-wet concrete in two passes and trowelled straight into the slab. Because it fuses monolithically with the base concrete instead of sitting on top of it as a separate layer, there’s no bond line to fail, no risk of the curling or delamination that a bolted-on granolithic screed can suffer, and no second mobilisation of crew and plant days after the pour. The floor that comes off the trowel is the finished wearing surface.
That single-pour logic is why it turns up so often on PEB warehouse and 3PL fulfilment-centre specs across Delhi NCR, and increasingly on manufacturing shop floors and parking decks where owners want real abrasion resistance without paying resin-topping money or losing a week to cure time. Sika’s own data sheet is careful to flag it as a professional-application product — the window between “concrete can be stepped on without a deep footprint” and “concrete has gone off” is short and unforgiving, and getting the two-stage broadcast and trowelling sequence wrong shows up permanently in the finished surface. Space Arc supplies Chapdur IN with a trained application crew for exactly that reason, rather than leaving a first-time site team to learn the timing on a live pour.
The technical insight
The hardening mechanism is straightforward hydraulic chemistry, but the execution window is where projects actually succeed or fail. As the dry-shake powder sits on the fresh concrete, cement paste and mix water from the slab below migrate up into it, hydrating the powder’s own cement content and fusing the two layers into one monolithic mass — which is exactly why the product must never have water added to its surface manually; that shifts the water-cement ratio of the hardened layer and undermines the strength it’s meant to deliver. The graded natural mineral aggregate (non-metallic, not corundum or emery) is selected and blended to deliver a surface of Mohs 8-9 hardness and ≥70 N/mm² compressive strength, with abrasion loss of roughly 1.70 mm under the IS:1237 wear test — figures that hold only when the base slab itself meets a minimum 20 N/mm² strength and a workable 75-110 mm slump, because the hardener toughens a surface, it doesn’t correct what’s beneath it.
Where it is used
- Warehouse and distribution-centre floors under forklift and pallet-truck traffic
- Factory and manufacturing shop floors carrying trolley and machine loads
- Multi-level and basement parking decks
- Service stations, garages and vehicle workshop floors exposed to oil and grease
- Shopping mall back-of-house corridors and loading bays
- Museum and public-building floors specified for durability and low maintenance
- Cold storage and dry-goods storage floors
- Ramps and spillways in industrial premises
Key advantages
- Bonds monolithically in the same pour — no cold joint, no delamination risk of a separately laid topping
- ≥70 N/mm² surface compressive strength and Mohs 8-9 hardness, verified against IS:4031 Part 6 and IS:13630 Part 13
- Non-metallic aggregate — won’t rust or stain in damp, washdown, or humid areas
- Cuts the surface dusting that plagues untreated trafficked concrete
- Adds real resistance to oils and grease without a separate coating
- Factory-preblended for consistent quality bag to bag, unlike site-mixed toppings
- Meaningfully cheaper per square metre than an epoxy or PU floor system
- Foot-traffic ready in about 72 hours, fully serviceable in about 7 days at 27°C substrate temperature
Limitations & considerations
- Sika’s own data sheet restricts it to experienced professional applicators — timing and trowelling technique, not just dosage, determine the result
- Some colour variation across the floor is normal and expected, not a manufacturing defect
- Not suitable over air-entrained concrete
- Cannot be applied in strong wind or very dry ambient conditions, which pull moisture out of the dry-shake layer too fast
- Needs a base slab of at least 20 N/mm² compressive strength and 75-110 mm slump — it hardens good concrete, it doesn’t rescue poor concrete
- A cementitious surface hardener, not a chemical-resistant coating — aggressive chemical exposure calls for a resin topping instead
Selection & best practice
Match the dosage to the traffic the floor will actually see — 3.5-4.0 kg/m² for light duty up to 5.5-6.0 kg/m² for heavy duty — rather than defaulting to one rate across the whole slab. Broadcast in the two specified passes (60% then 40%), start work only once the concrete can be stepped on without leaving a footprint deeper than 3-5 mm, trowel promptly, and water-cure immediately after finishing — never wet the surface before that point. Since timing drives the outcome more than material quantity, book the applicator crew and the concrete pour for the same day and brief them together.
Specifications
| Chemical Base | Natural mineral aggregates graded and mixed with cement, admixtures and pigments |
| Packaging | 30 kg bags |
| Appearance / Colour | Natural concrete grey powder |
| Bulk Density | 1.5 ± 0.1 kg/L at +27°C |
| Compressive Strength | ≥ 70 N/mm² (IS:4031 Part 6) |
| Surface Hardness | Moh’s scale 8-9 (IS:13630 Part 13) |
| Abrasion Resistance | ~1.70 mm wear loss (IS:1237) |
| Consumption | 3.5-4.0 kg/m² light duty, 4.5-5.0 kg/m² medium duty, 5.5-6.0 kg/m² heavy duty |
| Shelf Life | 12 months from date of production, stored +10°C to +30°C |
Industry use cases
Warehousing & 3PL
Dry-shake hardener specified on e-commerce fulfilment centre and warehouse floors across Delhi NCR to withstand daily forklift and pallet-truck movement without dusting.
Manufacturing
Applied on factory shop floors carrying trolley and light machine traffic, where oil/grease resistance and surface hardness both matter.
Parking structures
Used as the wearing surface on multi-level and basement parking decks, giving a hard, non-slip, non-metallic finish that won’t rust-stain.
Institutional & public buildings
Specified on museum and public-area floors — a listed Sika use case — where durability and low maintenance outweigh a decorative resin finish.
Fuel & service infrastructure
Applied at service stations and vehicle workshops for a floor that resists oil and grease staining under constant vehicle traffic.
Frequently asked questions
How is Sika Chapdur IN different from an epoxy or PU floor coating?
Can it be applied to an existing concrete floor?
How soon can the floor take forklift traffic?
Does the grey colour limit our design options?
What condition does the base concrete need to be in?
Can our own site mason team apply it, or do we need a specialist crew?
How we position Sika Sika® Chapdur IN
Within the Sika range, Chapdur IN sits alongside Sikament and Sika® ViscoCrete superplasticisers — which Sika’s own data sheet recommends using in the base concrete mix to get the slump and compaction the hardener needs — and below the Sikafloor epoxy/PU family, which is the right call for projects needing a seamless, chemically resistant, or decoratively coloured finish rather than a cementitious dry-shake surface. For a genuinely comparable non-metallic dry-shake hardener, Fosroc’s Nitoflor Hardtop is a fair alternative that Space Arc also stocks and applies, useful where a project or specifier is already standardised on Fosroc systems.
Fosroc Nitoflor Hardtop — Teams already standardised on Fosroc systems elsewhere on a project, or wanting Fosroc’s specific STD/HD grade range, often specify Nitoflor Hardtop instead — a directly comparable non-metallic dry-shake hardener with no meaningful difference in outcome.
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