Glow-in-the-dark Patio: Way Cool for School

Jason Geiser, owner of Deco-Crete Supply in Orrville, Ohio, thought a broad, sloping hill at his three children’s new school needed something to transform it from a virtually unusable space to an inviting outdoor classroom. After talking things over with the superintendent, he and school officials came up with a project that revolved around Geiser building an amphitheater; and a glow-in-the-dark patio.

Donating time, labor and materials, Geiser and his crew tackled the project at Dalton Elementary and Middle School over the course of a year or so. Finally complete, the amphitheater comprises a five-tiered seating area. He made the area with concrete blocks faced with Kirtbag Carving Mix stained with Proline Easy Accent stains.

“We put down artificial turf between the tiers to make upkeep easier,” Geiser says. “It would have been a bear to mow between the rows.”

Out of this world

Above the seating walls is an upper area with picnic tables on a cappuccino and chocolate colored patio with an oyster white and smoky brown border. Stairs, textured with a rock-face form liner from Brickform, lead off the patio and down the hill to the literal star of the project — a jet-black patio adorned with glow-in-the-dark images of the Milky Way galaxy surrounded by a host of constellations, everything from the Big and Little Dipper to Orion the Hunter.

Geiser says he integrally colored the concrete used there with a Deco-Crete dark gray liquid colorant and a black shake-on color hardener. “I knew we were going to grind and I wanted the surface to be as black as possible,” he says. “And the only way to get it super black is to use a color hardener.”

 

On top of the hardener, he broadcast crushed mirror — about 25 pounds per every 100 square feet — and ground that down to expose the mirror. This addition gives the patio a special daytime effect. “When the sun shines on the glow-in-the-dark patio, it’s lit up with little sparkles that look like millions of stars twinkling in the sky,” he says.

Nighttime magic

But it’s at night when the patio really shines. The galaxy and the constellations — created with templates supplied by one of the school’s teachers — spring to life when the sun goes down.

On the template, bigger circles marked the constellations’ brighter stars to make them more prominent. Rather than using large glow stones for these points, they made 1/16-inch deep indents in the surface with different sized circles made from MDF (medium-density fiberboard). They then filled these indents with a slurry mix made from a two-part UV-stable epoxy and a glow-in-the-dark powder made by Glow Stones USA.

With glow-in-the-dark products, Geiser explains, the smaller luminescent particles glow much brighter than the larger stones. To make the stars appear glowing, he added very fine glow-in-the-dark powder to polyaspartic. He then used an HVLP (high-volume, low-pressure) gun to apply. “This created a fine mist around the stars which really looks cool at night,” he says. It illuminated them even more.

When they were all done spraying, they applied a clear coat of the same polyaspartic on everything.

An uphill battle

The biggest challenge Geiser and his crew faced was the project’s location. “It was on a hill and it was challenging to get the concrete there,” Geiser says. He added that they needed a slinger truck and everything had to be pumped.

The project also involved back-breaking wheelbarrow work — especially with the stone and landscape rock in the upper level.

And, since school was in session much of the time, they had to wait until the kids were gone because the work was noisy and disruptive.

Finishing touch

Besides the space-themed patio, the outdoor classroom has another interesting touch involving animal tracks. Between the black patio and school, an array of animals looks like they’ve run across the surface.

“You see bird prints. Then a fox’s. Then a combination of a fox chasing a bird,” Geiser says. “Doing that part was really fun.”

Geiser says that he incorporated tracks from a beaver, deer, racoon, opossum and squirrel as well. He found most of the tracks online and made rubber molds from them for the project.