Nice floor 5cent. I'm leaning towards doing the same thing (up here in Michigan, if there's one thing we have too much of it's time) and using a 4.5" also. Thank you for the tip on limiting water usage.
After you ran your wheel over your floor, did you then hit it with muratic acid? Water? Something else? What did you use for floor paint? I see the A & B buckets in the background, but not a paint mfr.... Does your paint seem to be holding up well after the winter months?
I completely understand the situation you're in. I was ready to get it done, but wanted to make sure I had all possible information before starting. I have never ground concrete before and wasn't really sure what to expect. With that being said, I wasn't sure how much the 7" or larger commercial grinders would remove and I wanted to be in control of it. After weighing all my options, I bought the 4.5" diamond grinder wheel for around $70 IIRC,and as I have said, have used it on multiple other projects. This was all done on my generic variable speed (RPM) grinder that i picked up from Autozone while in college a few years back.
Process wise, here's what I did.
1.) Not knowing what was on the floor, even though only 5 yrs old I knew it had to come off. I tried Muractic Acid (bought at Sams, which had 2 (1) gallon jugs). It barely reacted and the surface was no more coarse then starting.
2.) Time to grind. Did my research on grinding, got prices and moved foward with 4.5" wheel.
3.) Started in corner, played with RPM setting for best texture/ease of use and went to town. The dust was nuts so I tried adding water. I sprayed the area I was working in. Right away I thought this was the way to go, but the slurry became so thick that it was difficult to see where I had done. If I wanted to see, then I would have spray it down again, and now there's slurry all over the place. Not only that, I had to spray it all the way out of the garage (started in back corner), so I got out the fan and just dealt with the fact that it's going to be dusty
4.) After garage was ground, I used the muractic acid 2x more until there was little to no reaction. I then powerwashed it 2x and let it dry. The next day I came back and powerwashed it again and let it dry. It dried for I think a day or so then went to putting down epoxy.
5.) What you are calling paint is actually epoxy. It's solvent based and made by epoxy-coat (
www.epoxy-coat.com). If you do a search you will find plenty of information on this product. This was done almost 6 months ago and I'm do for an update thread. It's held up great and I HIGHLY recommend the product to anyone looking to do an epoxy floor.
Where abouts in MI are you at? If you're ever down in northern, oh and want to check it out, feel free to let me know.
