Polished Concrete & Terrazzo

Our competitors will try to sell you a “polished” concrete system for full price while providing you nothing more than a chemically densified and burnished concrete slab using a high speed buffer. This option will look great for the first six months and slowly revert back to bare unpolished concrete. Just look at your local Lowes or Home Depot and then take a look at your granite countertop at home; that’s the difference. DPDG strictly adheres to the Concrete Polishing Association guidelines for surface cut and reflective clarity.

Depending on the specific uses of a floor, coatings may be a better finish in the long-run. Polished concrete is a treatment to make the concrete surface more abrasion and stain resistant. However, it should never be confused with a coating in that it is still prone to staining and etching if exposed to oil or acids; even mild acids like soda or orange juice will etch polished concrete. Polished concrete can be used on projects that need to withstand foot and/or wheeled traffic, will be washed regularly, not intended to resist stains and not intended to handle acid attack. If the preceding criteria are met, then a polished concrete surface is the perfect choice for long term durability and beauty. Typical applications include airplane hangars, schools, manufacturing businesses, distribution warehouses, parking structures, retail locations, airports, convention halls and residential slabs.

Typically once a week is all that is required to maintain a polished concrete slab. An auto scrubber works best for this, but smaller areas can be done with a mop and wet vac. For cleaning solutions/products, there are none. The owner only has to use water to maintain a polished concrete surface.

Polished concrete and Terrazzo are the most durable flooring system when compared with typical flooring finishes. It requires very little maintenance which basically amounts to weekly washings with an auto scrubber and water. When compared to other flooring finishes, their respective maintenance schedules and serviceable life spans polished concrete is the cheapest flooring system to own. Another benefit of polished concrete and Terrazzo is that the maintenance of the floor will not harm the environment with harsh chemical or wax residues. Since the floors only need to be washed with water, the waste can go directly into a sanitary drain without any soap or chemical residuals.

For instance, VCT (vinyl composition tile) requires regular waxing, buffing and stripping to keep it looking good. The cost of labor combined with chemicals usually costs the owner an average of $1 per square foot/per year. Then after 10 years, the floor starts to show it's age and needs to be replaced. This cost could easily be double the original installation cost. Concrete and Terrazzo polishing requires only auto scrubbing weekly; forever. The same is true of epoxies and carpeting; regular, costly maintenance with a relatively short life-cycle when compared to polished concrete or Terrazzo.

The polishing process by itself does very little to contribute to the longevity of the flooring finish unless a densifier is used. A densifier is a chemically reactive product that reacts with compounds present in all concrete slabs. The densifier is typically a Silicate solution that is carried by Lithium, Potassium or Sodium and applied by sprayer or broom during the polishing process. The chemistry of the reaction that takes place is detailed, but the most important fact to note is that the chemical reaction creates a 'skin' of sorts on the concrete that is very abrasion resistant and is the sole reason a polished slab retains its shine.

The initial procedure of polishing concrete is typically greater than conventional flooring finishes. To provide a polished concrete floor, contractors must own expensive and specialized pieces of equipment. This combined with the vast experience a qualified contractor should have makes the owning and operating of a polishing business very expensive. However, when judging whether to own a polished concrete floor, an owner/architect needs to gauge the cost of the flooring over the building's life span and the day-to-day operating costs that are incurred for regular maintenance. In almost all cases, polished concrete is the cheapest floor to own.

Polished concrete can be colored using dyes or new slabs can be poured with integral color and then polished. The results of each process is very different in final appearance, but it is important to note that concrete can be dyed or poured in a wide variety of colors to match any color scheme. Another popular way of customizing polished concrete is to add decorative aggregates to fresh concrete. Contractors regularly use marble or granite chips, colored glass and natural shell to provide a completely unique floor that has a place in the highest end offices and homes.

In most cases you don't. The only way to know if your concrete is able to be polished is to perform a mock-up or sample. This sample should be done on all slabs, new or old, so the owner is aware of the final product as well as providing the contractor with the proper procedure to achieve the desired finish. The good news though is that new and old slabs are polished every day, regardless of age and in our experience we have had only two slabs in five years that didn't polish.