New floor - grind and clear only?

[Is0ld0ut]

The grocery and menards have floors like this. (pic below)
I am not sure if they are polished and cleared or just ground and cleared?
I am building a house so will be new concrete. I would want oil protection so SPGX was what I was looking at.

Also are there semi-transparent clears to lighten or darken the floor?

This picture is from pinterest but looks like the floor I have seen.

Thanks


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[Armorpoxy]

Hi
The floors at home centers are polished. They may add a tint to the concrete to darken a bit but you can stain your floors prior to coating with SPGX.


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[Is0ld0ut]

Thanks for the reply. I don't think I want to spend the time for a full polish. Would a few grits of grinding/polishing followed by spgx give the exposed aggregate and a similar look?

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[Armorpoxy]

Yes it should, if you grind off the "cream" to expose the aggregate, when you coat it with the clear it will have a similar look.

But, don't underestimate the amount of grinding that is necessary to do this, and you also need a decent, heavy grinder with good low number diamnond tooling which will then require higher number (probably up to #120) to get rid of the swirl marks. It could be a lot if work just to expose the "salt and pepper".

 

[Is0ld0ut]

Thanks. Sounds like a bunch or work. I am guessing you know the swirl is gone if you spray it down with water and not see them?

Would the big HD grinders do the job?

Why do warehouses do this process if it would be quicker to coat with something and not polish?

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[SunsetsAndFriends]

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[LegacyIndustrial]

Thanks. Sounds like a bunch or work. I am guessing you know the swirl is gone if you spray it down with water and not see them?

Would the big HD grinders do the job?

Why do warehouses do this process if it would be quicker to coat with something and not polish?

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New stores do NOT polish. They learned very fast that polishing is big bucks!!
They "slick trowel" the surface, add densifier, add stainguard and then burnish very keenly, sometimes using diamond impregnated pads.

Once up and running they maintain the floor with products like Diamabrush on floor-scrubber machines and I have seen terrazzo sealers being used around Orlando too.

 

[Armorpoxy]

We find that many large stores do polish, and continue to specify it. We do work for Whole Foods, Home Centers, Saks, etc that currently use polishing. They maintain the floors with standard walk behind or ride on floor cleaning equipment.

Since polishing uses densifiers and stain blockers and not coatings that can scratch and/or get damaged, while they can cost a more, they are much less expensive to maintain.

As for cost/sq ft, when doing very large areas we come in with ride-on polishers with multiple heads so the cost/ft approaches or is less than epoxy installed, but this is only on very large jobs with large open areas where we can get excellent production rates which we can't get in small areas as the labor cost much higher/sq ft.