Keswick Water Park: A StreetBond 150 Recoat for the City of Burnaby

Keswick Water Park is a neighbourhood spray park in Burnaby, one of the city's summer-destination amenities for families. Ahead of the 2024 season, the City of Burnaby specified a StreetBond 150 recoat of the park's surface coatings. We installed the recoat. The park opened on schedule with the refreshed surface carrying the colours the community expected to see.

This is a case study on recoat work — the category of pavement-coating project that keeps civic recreation surfaces readable across their intended service life.

What a Recoat Actually Is

A StreetBond install has a service life in the fifteen-plus year window at full colour saturation under BC conditions. Past that window, the material is still structurally sound and still protecting the substrate, but the colour fades from its original saturation. For a recreational-use site like a spray park, where colour is part of the experience, that colour fade starts to read as tired pavement even when the underlying structure is fine.

A recoat solves the colour problem without requiring a full removal and reinstall. The existing StreetBond surface gets prepped — cleaned, any failed patches repaired — and a fresh colour layer is applied over the existing substrate. The chemistry of the StreetBond system supports this kind of layered recoat directly.

For Burnaby, the recoat approach reset the Keswick surface to full-saturation colour ahead of a busy summer season, without the cost and the closure window that a full reinstall would have required.

Why StreetBond 150 for a Spray Park

Spray park surfaces operate under an unusual set of stressors. The surface is wet most of the operating day. Children run, fall, and slide across it. Pool chemicals, sunscreen residue, and organic debris accumulate on the coating. Winter freeze-thaw cycles work through the surface when the park is closed.

StreetBond 150 is engineered for this environment. The coating chemistry bonds to the substrate in a way that tolerates continuous moisture. The surface profile holds slip-resistance under wet conditions. The colour palette retains saturation under continuous UV.

Paint doesn't survive a spray park environment. Tile presents safety and maintenance challenges that spray parks are specifically designed to avoid. StreetBond 150, or its equivalent in the decorative-coating category, is the standard specification for this use.

The Prep

Before the recoat colour went down, the existing surface was pressure-cleaned and inspected. Any areas of coating failure — small spots where the underlying asphalt had been exposed by wear — were repaired ahead of the colour application.

Spray parks are easier to prep than most civic sites because the park is closed during prep and the surface is designed to drain cleanly. The harder part of a spray park recoat is scheduling — the install has to happen in a window that lets the system cure fully before the summer opening, and the ambient temperature has to support that cure schedule.

At Keswick, we scheduled the install in late May, which gave the recoat roughly two weeks of cure time before the June opening. That's within the cure window StreetBond specifies, with schedule buffer in case weather required a short delay.

The Colour Match

A recoat raises a particular question about colour: do you match the original install exactly, or do you refresh the palette? For Keswick, the City specified a faithful match to the original palette. The park's character is tied to the colours the community grew up with, and the recoat was meant to restore that character rather than reinvent it.

We ran sample panels on-site before the full recoat began, matching the new colour batches against the residual saturation of the existing surface in areas the community engaged with most directly. The Parks team reviewed the samples and confirmed the match before we committed to the full install.

That step matters more than most clients realize. Colour matching on a recoat is not the same problem as colour matching on a new install — you are matching to a weathered surface, not to a specification sheet, and the panel review is the only way to confirm the match reads correctly under site lighting.

What the Park Looks Like Now

Keswick reopened in June 2024 with the refreshed surface. The colours read at full saturation. The substrate is protected for another service window. The community engaged with the park the way it has for years, with the visual refresh landing as "the park looks good this year" rather than as an announced renovation.

That reading is the goal of a successful recoat. The community should recognize the park, not interrogate the surface. If the recoat works, the work becomes invisible — which is, of course, the opposite of how it works on an initial install.

For Parks and Recreation Teams

If you're a BC municipal parks or recreation team with StreetBond surfaces past their colour-saturation window, a recoat is worth evaluating before a full reinstall. The cost difference is substantial and the closure window is shorter.

We've done recoat work across the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island — spray parks, pool decks, park plazas, civic courtyards. Get in touch for a condition assessment and a recoat scope conversation.