Concrete Floors: Does ‘sealed’ mean the same thing as ‘polished?’

Source:www.stonediamondtool.com Date:2020/7/7 Read:297

October 16, 2014

By Andy Bowman
The continued rise in popularity of polished concrete floors, combined with a spate of new ‘polishing’ products on the market, has created a perfect storm for construction specifiers. The industry has responded by releasing a new standard to measure and evaluate polished concrete surfaces.

Polished concrete has become a popular flooring choice in contemporary design. It is economical and durable, which has made it a good fit for warehouse and retail applications. However, economy alone cannot account for the material’s popularity. Polished concrete’s allure stems from the fact it is an artisanal product—rustic, yet at the same time refined. The combination of earthy material with industrial esthetic has caused polished concrete floors to show up everywhere from upscale commercial environments to residential design.

The rapid increase in polished concrete installations has made it difficult for scientific methods and standards to keep pace. Today’s concrete polishing industry uses a wide range of systems and equipment, along with various specially formulated chemicals and abrasives. This means the specification of a polished floor can result in myriad actual finished surfaces.

Problems and solutions
In particular, many coatings are now being marketed to accomplish the sealing of concrete floors. What has become obscured is the fact that, in traditional polishing operations, it is the concrete itself that creates the characteristic glossiness and shine. A polished concrete surface is, strictly speaking, one in which abrasive tools with progressively finer grit have been used to refine the concrete material. While small scale pits or imperfections refract light, highly polished concrete will reflect the light. Ideally, polished concrete would be scratch-free and have a surface texture without abrasion points—in other words, it would not rely on a sealant to produce its gloss.

Historically, only one tool has been used to provide a quantitative standard for finished concrete surfaces: the gloss meter. While a gloss meter records the light reflected from a surface, it does not measure the actual surface texture. The use of a gloss meter alone to assess a surface can mask its imperfections by measuring the reflection produced by topical concrete polishing sealers actually covering flaws and scratches.

With sustainability and lifecycle issues coming increasingly to the fore, the polishing industry would benefit from de-emphasizing the mere appearance of glossiness and taking a more holistic approach. Accomplishing this involves a shift in focus toward standards that are performance-based and encourage use of a good concrete mix in the initial pour. Gloss will then become a natural byproduct of the polishing operation.