I am in the process so thought I would share what I know so far and hopefully some others maybe able to guide my next step.
I have a 100m2 slab with the frame on it now. Its the same raft slab done by the guy on Grand Designs last week.
The slab was poured in two batches with a massive weather change during the day so there are two distinct sides to it. Following the pour it was powerfloated.
I am polishing it with a coarse grinder from a hire shop. Its been 4-5 days solid of grinding to get most of it showing cut stone. I am wetting the floor and constantly sweeping the residue away as it blocks the grinder.
I now have to buy the next levels of coarseness to get the stone to polish to a finish and apply a hardener as Hire stores dont stock them. They are about £200 each apparently.
Does anyone know how many grades and which I can get away with and specifically which hardener is worth using?
Any experience would be gladly taken on board. The machine I am using is a HTC Greyline 270
Books 
Comments
He advised me to get someone with all the gear to do it professionally.
He could not have been more clear about the cost and amount of work involved.
After my chat with him I started to appreciate why they charge £100 per sqm for polishing concrete.
I hired an HTC420 machine which has 3 heads and 3 tools in each head so 9 total to do the job from a company not too far away.
I ended up buying most of the blades (tools I think they call them) except the second level (there were about 8 levels in total!). So i bought the most aggressive blades but not the next one down. I spent most of a week on the first set and they barely went down from the original 10mm. I could have spent less time doing that if I had got a flatter floor!
After that I used a hired set for the next grit up and then moved on to the resin set diamond blades - these are very different from the velcro type (fenix from HTC) that another company suggested I use. A lot depends on the type of concrete - mine was a C30 I think.
Anyway the resin set tools wear a lot quicker than the metal bond tools so after a few passes some had gone down by 1/3.
Looking at the spec I think the HTC 270 takes different blades though I might be wrong (I know a lot of the HTC stuff all work on the ones I got). But if they could be of any use maybe we could do an exchange on mm wear at a better rate than through the normal channels! Where are you based?
For hardener I got 25 litre from HTC though I suspect one can get it a lot cheaper from another trade if you could find out what it actually is! I still have about half left I think.
john
The tool hire for a different machine form a different company is £90 a week and the long lost of tools suggested to get fine polish comes to about £700 then the hardener for another £200 makes for a cheap floor.
I dont think you are far away from me.
Been quoted approx £100/sqm which makes it around £10,000 for me.
Which is about what you'd pay for a nice natural stone floor, or about half that if you did it yourself.
Been quoted approx £100/sqm which makes it around £10,000 for me.
Which is about what you'd pay for a nice natural stone floor, or about half that if you did it yourself.
That's the problem. 2 to 3k on hiring equipment makes it a cheap floor. My time doesn't cost me anything.
It went well considering it was a learning curve. It isn't smart enough for a London apartment but we really like it flaws and all. The concrete pour was paused midway due to traffic problems so there is a distinct join which we couldn't grind out. There are also small patches where the sand didn't mix totally in but it isn't too noticeable in an aggregate floor. The grinding was laborious but easy. I don't have the numbers to hand but it was a fraction of the cost of a slate floor which was our other option. It is lovely and smooth, responds well with underfloor and acts as a good solar store. Message me if you want to come and have a look. We still have all the heads in good condition that will do the same again at least twice before wearing out.
The stuff I bought is an Egyptian stone, it's well machined, nicely calibrated, with a good finish, and good value. Not quite as hard as the Jura's, but close and certainly well up to any domestic interior.