EGT System Wins Battle with 60-Year Old Concrete Floor – Chicago IL
A few years back, we visited a customer who purchased a 60-year-old 20,000 SF warehouse in Chicago IL.
His first challenge was to clean up and prepare the loading area which showed years of use and neglect. They chose to use the EGT Diamond System in a test area to tackle the problem head-on. And, they were shocked at the results!
It was obvious the concrete floor in this old warehouse had seen decades of extremely rough use. It was badly gouged and extremely uneven in several areas. There were holes and cracks that appeared throughout the entire surface that made it difficult to believe it would ever look good again.
The Process
The first step in the process was to use the STI #0 Prep Tool to remove the deep gouges and flatten the undulations in the floor. There was a lot of dust collected in the process, but it was necessary in order to grind the floor down to an even level.
Then, they used the EGT metal tools ”“ #1, #2, and #3 ”“ to remove the scratches from the prep tools. After the EGT#3 step was completed, the floor started to have some hope as they could already see some reflection on the surface!
The next step was to use the STI Grout Pans fitted on the STI P/M machine to fill the pinholes in the exposed aggregate floor. The STI Grout Pans are a new, unique invention by STI which reduces the need to grout by hand and fills over 95% of the holes. The machine-driven grouting step greatly reduces additional hand grouting labor costs by 1/3 as well as increases the probability of maintaining a shine longer over years of traffic and use. Once the grouting was done, it was time to start polishing.
At this time in the process, they used a concrete densifier. A concrete densifier chemically hardens the surface of the floor. This hardening strengthens the concrete, increases the longevity of the shine, reduces dust, and makes the floor more stain resistance.
Then, the final steps were polishing with the remaining EGT diamonds – the resin pads #4, #5, #6, #7, & #8 – which brought the floor surface up to a mirror-like shine. The gloss meter reading was over 80!
STI Diamonds Speak for Themselves
Our customer was truly shocked at the results! The EGT Diamond System by STI speaks for itself. It’s a complete diamond system that our customers return to over and over again, and they never use anything else. Try it for yourself!