Eco Guard

What is polished concrete?

Polishing concrete is similar to sanding wood. Using progressively finer grits of diamond impregnated segments or disks, similar to sandpaper, the concrete is steadily ground down to the desired degree of polish. A concrete floor polish has a sleek, reflective finish to it. The reflectivity of the floor, as well as the color, patterns and designs of the floor can be controlled by different levels of polishing. Due to its low maintenance, polished concrete can be found in many commercial building.

What are the benefits of concrete polishing?

As mentioned above, polished concrete has a very low amount of maintenance associated with it while still appearing elegant. It is also considered a sustainable design flooring option due to the fact that it makes use of materials that are already present since most modern buildings are built on a concrete slab. By simply polishing the exposed concrete, the energy and material that would typically be used to produce a floor covering are not necessary.

Polished concrete also reduces potential dust mite and allergen activities as it does not retain or support the growth of these entities, nor does it produce or support mold.

How are polished concrete floors produced?

Using concrete polishing tools, a concrete floor is scored with a range of diamond abrasive grits. Depending on the situation, this can be performed dry or wet, dry exposes workers as well as HVAC systems in the surrounding area with harmful amorphous silica dust however.

After this a densifier is applied once the concrete is open and ready to accept the chemical. Once the concrete densifier has dried and cured, one or more resin abrasive cuts will be used to polish the floor to the desired gloss. After this an indensifier or concrete microfilm is used to work into the surface. This provides the glossy look of the finished floor, it also strengthens the floor. The floor is then given its final gloss and the surface is cleaned.

Concrete Polishing Tools Used

The tool most used in all of this is concrete polishing tools, or a concrete grinder. These come in many configurations, the most common for concrete floor polish being a purpose-built floor grinder. Diamond tools or silicon carbide are used by all grinders as a sort of abrasive to grind or polish the concrete. Some of these machines run on electricity but a growing number of them are beginning to use alternative fuels and do not use electricity as their main power source.