When you’re looking for professional concrete polishing in Miami-Dade, Broward, or Palm Beach Counties in Florida, you want National Floor Solutions. With more than 30 years of professional concrete grinding and polishing experience, we know exactly what it takes to get the job done right the first time. Since opening our doors, we’ve built our reputation on handling the tough jobs that others failed at, walked away from, or refused. Give us a call today to learn more about our concrete polishing services for your home or business.
What Is Polished Concrete?
The new “it” flooring option is polished concrete. These floors are taking over as an alternative to porcelain and natural stone. The combination of concrete being at the foundation of all modern buildings combined with advances in grinding equipment, techniques, and experience will bring you flooring that will stand the test of time. You can opt for a light polish (satin finish) all the way to a high gloss that reflects like a mirror. It doesn’t hurt that this type of flooring is also far more durable, doesn’t chip, and lasts practically forever, making it a great commercial (Home Depot) and industrial (factories/airplane hangars) solution that has quickly found appeal in the residential market with decorative options of dying, scoring lines, and other accents.
Concrete Polishing Process
If you’re familiar with sanding wood, you’ll quickly understand the process of polishing concrete. Using heavy grinding equipment armed with diamond tooling, we grind the concrete to remove imperfections and reach the customer’s desired level of sheen. We achieve this by grinding in a successive order from a rough grit diamond up the ladder to finer grit diamonds. We apply liquid concrete densifiers that fill the matrix of the concrete. These then cure and become part of the concrete, therefore producing a mirror finish with depth and clarity. In the end, you get beautiful, durable, and shiny concrete.
There are two main methods used to create polished concrete floors. Our concrete floor polishers use the dry method in which we do not use water and instead attach high-powered industrial vacuums with HEPA filters to our grinding machines. These industrial vacuums contain the dust created by grinding concrete and eliminate the need for water.
Do you want a flatter floor? Our concrete polishing technicians start with 1500-pound Terrco grinders with stiff rotary heads to flatten and level the concrete surface to the best of our ability. We then follow with planetary machines for the finishing phases of polishing. Our preferred method for grinding concrete surpasses results that others deliver, especially in large commercial or industrial spaces.
National Floor Solutions has been the best choice for South Florida concrete floor polishing services. Our experts will give your home, office, or building the flooring you need. Give us a call today to learn more.
Concrete Polishing In Depth
Is the concrete floor new or existing?
If it’s existing we’ll assess any high or low spots, joint stress, cracks, existing applications (like paint, coatings, sealers), adhesive for removal and any other potential complications that need to be remedied. An existing concrete floor that exhibits excessive patching of holes or softness may not be a candidate for concrete polishing. This can be determined by hardness testing. The customer should be aware that any repairs will be noticeable upon completion.
It’s the preferred method for grinding concrete, especially in large commercial or industrial spaces where using water (known as wet grinding) would create a substantial amount of slurry waste to dispose.
If the concrete is new, we must ensure we’ve passed the proper cure time (roughly two to four weeks).
We’ll start by removing any existing coatings by grinding. Depending on the thickness of the coating this can be a more aggressive grind or the initial stages of concrete polishing by rough grinding. Follow up with filling of any imperfections and voids that require.
What we want to do here is prepare the floor by grinding with a rough grit diamond (depending on slab conditions) and progressing up to a 200 grit (or a 400 grit if we’re applying a colored dye).
At this stage we’ll apply a chemical hardener to the concrete and allow it to cure for a period of 12 to 24 hours, depending of product specifications. This process increases the concrete’s protection from staining and water penetration while giving the concrete qualities that improve the polishing process, resulting in a better product.
The home stretch! We’ve moved away from rough grit diamonds and to resin diamonds. Once again, moving through progressively finer grits we grind the concrete floor to the customer’s required polish. Personally, we think the shinier the better.
Now that we have a beautiful polished concrete floor we need to protect it. To do that, we’ll apply a protective sealer to guard against stains from any chemicals that may make contact with the floor. Periodic reapplication is suggested to maintain this protective barrier.