Polished Concrete Floors

Smirky

Anyone have any experience in / know who I can talk to for Polisjed Concrete floors?

I want to choose colour / aggregrate / smoothness or gloss of finish etc and then have them lay a solid polished floor acroos a large kitchen / living area.

Any pointers appreciated!

Endymion

What do you mean colour? You can have Grey, black, red, brown, white and afew other base colours, but you can't just pick a colour like you would a paint. How big an area are you talking btw? Because I've only seen it done on a huge scale, with readymix.

I've no real idea who you would get to do it, but the first place I'd start would be to go through the readymix grounds and ask if they know of anybody askign for those type of orders.

CJhaughey

Polishing a large area is very time consuming which equates to expensive.
I have heard of benches made of concrete being polished but they are small in comparison to what you are talking about.
The problem with aggregate is that it sinks in a cement admix, this can be turned to your advantage if you pour in a mould and vibrate the aggregate to the bottom, turn it out and polish the bottom which is now your top.
I can't see how you could do this in situ?
There is a book called concrete at home by Fu-Tung Cheng.
It details concrete aesthetics in considerable detail.
My advice would be to forget polishing the whole area and just get a really good concrete worker that is a master of the powerfloat, Research the use of acid etching and staining and finishing. There is plenty of info on painted/stained concrete especially in the US.

Cheiftan

previous poster is right , you only have afew base colours to pick from , then pick your agregate size and colour. Be prepared to pay a HELL of a lot for the following reasons
1. readymix companies are doing very well at the minute and dont need the hassle.
2.for a special mix like this they need to clean out the mixers at the plant, really clean them dam good cos the slightest bit of ordinary concrete will ruin the colour.
3. next they need to clean out a concrete wagon for the same reasons as before.
4. Then they will mix your floor mix but will not mix anything else untill they get word from your pour that you don't need anymore coloured concrete, so you'll be paying for their lost revenue of been a mixer down at the batching plant.

If after all that your still gonna go for it what you want is a good reliable concrete flooring contractor( if you find one let me know;) ) he needs to carefully place screeds , place concrete , powerfloat to perfection and i mean perfection , first using pan then blades . Then he has to hit it with a carborundrum stone polisher , for hours and hours . After that you'll have your shiny floor.
As a rough guide , a company i used to work for were buying white concrete for a job and it was 2.5 times the price of normal concrete and that was with us getting main contractors discount.

sorry if i sound pessimistic , but you did ask:D

Best of luck with the floor , hope it works out for you.

ircoha

Op; my initial reaction was as the other posters, with the added suggestion of re-mortgaging first:)

However I googled
http://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=navclient&aq=t&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLJ,GGLJ:2006-32,GGLJ:en&q=polished+concrete+floors

it seems u can buy the finish as tiles.

I must concur with who ever suggested this product is best made upside down. I designed and made this sort of finish in pre-cast for a year {in Canada} and the best finish is when it is made upside down and u can vibrate the whole unit to get the stone to settle.

To do it insitu would be mega hard to get right, just reflect on the technology required to get that finish. also it wont get right up to the edge, unless u do it before the wall get built

Smirky

Thanks to all of you, extremely informative posting!

I was worried that this might be the case. I am just back from Thailand 3 weeks hols & everywhere seems to have used this technique, from tiny shops to full hotels. So I (obviously mistakenly) assumed it would be a cheaper solution than buying natural stone tiles. Plus it looks great!

I did a bit of googling & only managed to find 2 companies here who seem to do it (all be it for commercial mainly) so I just was not sure what the story was on it.

CJhaughey

You are not talking about Terrazzo by any chance are you?

Smirky

Not sure what you mean CJHaughey, can you elaborate?

Mellor

Cheiftan wrote:

As a rough guide , a company i used to work for were buying white concrete for a job and it was 2.5 times the price of normal concrete and that was with us getting main contractors discount.

Alot of people are using GGBS at a substitute for a percentage of the cement in concrete. Gives a white finish, how white depends on amount used, costs the same as regular stuff, and it has a much lower embodied energy so its good for all the low carbon talk at the moment.

Smirky

CJ, I did a bit of research and yes I think I may be talking about Terrazzo and not polished concrete!

Can anyone enlighten me to the differences between these, where one should go to get quotes etc?

Hopefully it will also be cheaper than the polished concrete route!!

ircoha

Smirky wrote:

CJ, I did a bit of research and yes I think I may be talking about Terrazzo and not polished concrete!

Can anyone enlighten me to the differences between these, where one should go to get quotes etc?

Hopefully it will also be cheaper than the polished concrete route!!

see this link
www.mcauleys.net

got the ref in a flyer at the building show

antoinolachtnai

What about to do the flat, grey concrete floor look? How is that done?

Smirky

Nice one Ircoha, I will drop them a line for a quote!

Shayj43

For polished concrete in ireland go to www.renobuild.ie
Great work! Have always had a good experience with them

jack of all

I can also recommend this firm in Mountrath Co. Laois, Vincent does quality work:

http://www.uniqrete.ie/

I have no connection with this firm other than the fact that I have specified and seen work completed by them.