Concrete Polish’ Slip Resistance
Just by looking at a concrete polish’ finish, you’ll instantly have that question whether you’ll slide off because it might seem too smooth and shiny to walk to. Especially if what you have on is an stiletto, or a shoes with no rubber traction to it. Being an owner of an establishment meant to be visited by customers, or inside the house with toddlers, slippery floors should be avoided.
Signs like “slippery when wet” won’t necessarily prevent a slipping accident. When kids starts running around and no one is able to control them, they are bound to slip or fall anytime. So are these women wearing stiletto footwear, and men with their no traction soles. Its unavoidable, but can easily be prevented.
Slip resistance is a feature significant to these highly adored concrete polished floors. Slip resistant is term which relates to the measure of a surfaces ability to reduce or prevent the risk of slipping on both wet and dry conditions. Because of the increasing popularity of the concrete polished finish, the issue about its slip resistance becomes a highlight on its must have attributes.
There are a few aspects that contribute to the impact of these slipping risks. This includes the pavements surface finish, the sealer used, and the chosen texture. With the right combination of these three characters, you will be able to achieve the final surface roughness that you desire for your concrete polished pavement or floor.
The key to keeping a concrete polished floor safe and slip free is actually very simple. Besides making sure you have combined all three aspects the right way, all you are asked to do to keep the slip resistance of the floor is to make sure it does not have contaminants on it at all times.
These contaminants are usually the often cause of floors becoming slippery, especially when wet. So all in all, as long as you follow the simple steps, and keeping the concrete polished floor clean, gives you the safety and non slippery feature you want to achieve.
Keeping Your Polished Concrete’s Quality
So, you’ve done it! You have finally converted your concrete floor to a polished one and now it looks amazing. What are you forgetting? You see, although it had been known that concrete polished floors are made to last for a very long time, its longevity still depends on proper maintenance. If left bared without proper care, the quality would always surely fail.
Making sure that a sealer is used over the cracks and gaps of the polished floor is the first step in improving the quality of the floor. The same sealer can be used if after some time cracks are already developing on it. Epoxy is one of the best products to use for this problem.
When you are already sure that you’ve got the sealing done, the next thing to do is to keep the polished floor clean all the time. Unlike most floor types, you are not required to put wax on concrete polished floor as often as the other floor styles require. However, there are floor polishes available that could help somehow in maintaining your concrete polished floor’s condition. This helps in avoiding or risking slipping when wet situations.
By keeping your floor clean and dry, you are helping it in keeping that slip resistance attribute that everyone wants from a concrete polished floor. Contamination is one of the major contributor in making concrete polished floor slippery, so making sure your floor is free from contaminants will help greatly.
Polishing your floor will help in filling on the surfaces’ roughness thus providing the grip friction necessary for its slip resistance feature. This however depends on the type of concrete polished style you have on your place. If it has that low surface roughness, lessening the layers of the polish to be applied should be followed.
Basic Methods of Concrete Polishing
Just by hearing the term polished concrete already gives you that picturesque variety of decorative shiny concrete flooring possibilities. Polished concrete is the generic term for that said floor styling everyone had been adoring lately. Without the need for any other coating of vinyl, carpet or tiles, concrete polishing allows you the ability to expose the concrete floor as it is, but only more stylish.
There are three methods to use on concrete polishing: honing, burnishing, or trowelling. Depending on the design and pattern that you want for your floor, these three options will give you the sought of style that you always wanted. This offered concrete polishing option carries qualities like being energy efficient, dust free and requires low maintenance.
A steel trowelled finish is a concrete polishing process that can be achieved by hand or with a power trowelling machine. Whichever you will use depends mostly on the area to be processed. Trowelling marks are one of the downsides on this option however, if advised, can be fixed and or avoided. It gives off the typical natural grey concrete look, but can be upgraded to a lighter color by incorporating an amount of off white cement.
Burnishing is an option that can be done right after the trowelling process. When the concrete floor has reached that polished glossy appearance, alternative burnishing materials like floor waxes, liquid polishes, and resin based coatings can be applied for the look you are after for.
The honing process, which is the third method in the concrete polishing list, is the toughest or better yet, the one with the most required depth in the process. Through honing, one is required to grind the concrete surface with abrasives. Besides the smooth surface that it produces, aggravates should start to appear at some point adding up to the end aesthetic result.
With a little bit of creativity and a know how in mixing up all the said processes, a delightful, appreciated concrete polished output will be achieved. Include in desired color combination and desired pattern to input and you’ll have the polished concrete you can brag to your friends.
Color Your World: Colored Polished Concrete
There are so many ways as to how you can achieve giving your concrete polished floor the color and design you desire for it. Among the coloring options includes common colored pigment application, chemical or acid staining, dye and tints that you can apply on your concrete polished surface. Adding on the desired color a pattern of your choice will finish up the look that you want for your polished concrete floor.
The color pigmentation option used to be the most common application used popularly before. Its process includes mixing the pigment to the thickness of the concrete and its topping layer. This is often used in conjunction with the honing process except that during honing, the pigment quantity needs to be lesser than when it is used on normal mixing. Pigmented colors are available in powder, liquid and granule form.
Color pigmentation works when these ultra fine pigment particles which are fine solids, disperse throughout the matrix of the concrete. It is featured in the dry shake feature and can be applied as a cement and sand hand cast onto the pre-hardened concrete surface. The process where the color comes off is through a monolithic topping formation.
The chemical staining, more commonly known as the concrete acid staining, is lately becoming more popular than the pigmenting option. The material or component in this option includes metallic salts mixed with a slightly acidic, water based solution. The acid is responsible in opening up the dense concrete surface, which allows the metallic salts to seep into the slab and react with the hydrated lime found in concretes compounds.
Unlike your usual idea of dyes and tints, the dyes and tints for concrete polish purposes are actually more opaque and remain on the surface of the concrete more than the acid or chemical stain. That means this coloring type is easier to handle and is actually often used to correct and repair results from the chemical and acid staining process. The color of these dyes and tints gives off more color options and are more vibrant than the other coloring solutions mentioned.
Painting or surface coating the concrete polished floor is probably the simplest concrete coloring method offered for the process. In this option, the contractor is only required to paint over the concrete slab’s surface after it had been sealed with a sealer completely. The output of your concrete polished floor will all come down to how well you can maximize the different methods given as suggestions.
Cleaning Concrete Polished Floor is Easy
Concrete polished floor had become quite the popular alternative against the rest of its floor type competition mostly because of how easy it is to maintain it. Usually, a polished concrete floor only requires mop damping, washing and nothing more. Unless of course necessary which could also be because of so many reasons.
If you chose the natural look for your concrete polishing floor style, you will have a bit of a hard time realizing your floor actually needs cleaning because of the way it can hide the dirt. The presence of dust buildup and grime on the surface of a natural colored concrete polished cannot easily be distinguished.
The color of the concrete polished floor should not be the basis of whether to clean it or not. When the floor both colored or gray, starts having dirt and grime build up, must be cleaned at once. This will help in guaranteeing the longevity of the floor’s life.
Before the total clean up necessary for the concrete polished floor, the first thing you should consider is removing the Epoxy residue left during the sealant process. This residue can be cleaned off by burning it with a blow torch. It is also possible that the burning would leave burnt marks. This can be cleaned with bleach.
After removing the Epoxy residue, options of deep cleaning includes the traditional water to parts of hydrochloric acid or phosphoric acid proportions for cleaning. The cleaning agent to be used depends on what is allowed for your floor’s material. With the rest of the dirt, you can always use that usual water and bleach mixture.
Steam cleaning is also an option to consider when cleaning your concrete polished floor. It is actually one of the safest means of maintenance that can prevent having unwanted damages on the floor due to inappropriate cleaning materials. This is often preferred when cleaning away coffee, pop, or other beverage stains on your polished concrete floor.
The hardest to clean for most of us seems to be an oil and grease trouble. Who would have thought that all you need to clean this mess up is some sawdust or kitty litter. You just have to spread this over the thick layer of stain, leave it to dry for probably a day or two, sweep it off, add some dry cement mix again on the stain, and that’s it. Goodbye oil and grease stain.
As for the rest of the dirt demands that needs cleaning, you may depend on the traditional cleaning style if it could easily be removed. Add in the regular maintenance required for the benefit of the floor, and that’s all. You will be guaranteed your floor will be able to service you for a very long time because of the way you are taking care of it, no questions asked.