Polishing of cement floor
In the past 10 years or so, polished concrete floors have been the popular floor choice for high-end residential buildings. Polished concrete floors are considered too industrialized by ordinary families, but this is not the case now.
Concrete floors are relatively easy to polish, wear-resistant, easy to maintain, very economical, stylish and can be used for life.
Concrete floors are suitable both indoors and outdoors, and can look great in all areas of the home, not just bathrooms and kitchens. Polished concrete is not limited to the floor, but can also be used as a kitchen countertop.
Type of concrete floor
There are two types of polished concrete floors: 1, new concrete floors; 2. Renovated concrete floors.
New polished concrete floor
New concrete floors require less work, which reduces costs, but you need to be aware of the following:
1, slab stone: standard concrete with brown river stone or black basalt stone. Your slab needs a lot of stone, you need to know what it looks like before ordering concrete. Discuss the type of stone with a specific supplier, but you can add some interesting stones to the concrete to make it unique. Interesting stone can be anything, including stained glass, shells, souvenirs and even fossils.
2. High slab: The concrete surface needs high standard processing to ensure the best polishing effect. Before you pour the concrete, you need to tell your concrete worker the polishing plan of your concrete floor. This will ensure that the polished surface is as smooth as possible.
3, inlay: In the finishing stage, when smoothing the wet concrete, decorative materials such as shells or car parts can be pressed the concrete surface. These pieces need to be advanced about 1 mm the concrete.
Renovation - refurbishment of polished concrete
In the flooring industry, if the floor is replaced by another floor, it is called retrofitting the concrete floor using a technique called concrete surface resurfacing. Concrete surface resurfacing can be done in one of two ways. :
1, the original board is polished: the existing floor is polished, the natural stone features will be highlighted (usually black basalt). Before choosing this method, it is best to test the slab (in the non-visible area) to find the type of stone in the slab. Because it may not be the material you expect.
2, plus layer: This method is to put 50 mm of new concrete on top of the old concrete slab. This option provides the opportunity to choose the stone you want in the new concrete layer, but there are big drawbacks. If 50 mm of concrete is added to the top of the concrete slab, the ceiling will be lowered and the opening and closing of all doors will be affected. This option is more suitable for older homes or homes above normal ceilings. Keep in mind that with Australian building codes, standard houses must have a ceiling height of at least 2.4 meters and a door height of at least 2.04 meters.
Polishing process
As shown in Figure 1, depending on the existing concrete surface and the required degree of stone exposure, a special diamond sanding disc is required to be sanded 3-4 times. This can be done wet or dry depending on the site, which will remove 3-5 mm of concrete thickness. If possible, try to sand the floor before all the walls are built. This will reduce costs, minimize messiness, ensure higher quality finishes and reduce grinding time.
2. After the surface is first ground, the cement is grouted to fill a recessed portion such as a bubble.
3. Grind twice before grouting.
4. Then add a transparent liquid hardener (thickener) to the surface with a tool similar to a window scraper. The hardener provides a very smooth appearance to the finished floor and gives the floor extra strength.