UGANDA'S LEADING EPOXY FLOORING SPECIALISTS
Floor Preparation
Industrial Flooring Preparation
At Rifa Flooring, we offer floor preparation as a standalone service or part of a complete package. We customize our approach based on the existing flooring. Our primary techniques, shot blasting and diamond grinding, are carried out using powerful three-phase vacuums to minimize dust. After this, we conduct edge grinding with handheld diamond grinders, ensuring minimal dust is generated.
Methods for Preparing Concrete Floors
To prepare concrete floors, the first step is to remove grime, calcareous salt, paint stains, and oil. Next, the top layer known as ‘laitance’ must be eliminated. Laitance is a mixture of water and fine sand that hardens into a brittle layer during the floating process.
Removing it is crucial before applying a primer, which ensures the porous concrete below is properly penetrated. Laitance can be removed using specific chemicals or mechanical methods like shot blasting.
Shot Blasting
Shot-blast cleaning effectively removes dirt, laitance, and other unwanted materials from surfaces. In this process, the floor surface is blasted with steel pellets propelled with force. Changing the speed and size of the pellets adjusts the cleaning efficiency and the surface roughness.
Concrete surface profile (CSP) measures surface roughness. A rough surface has a high CSP number, like CSP 9, while a smooth surface has a low number, like CSP 1.
Shot-blast devices collect dust, laitance, and steel pellets using an extractor that separates the pellets from the dust. The pellets are recycled during cleaning and later turn into dust, which goes into a dust container. After shot-blast cleaning, separate vacuuming is usually unnecessary.
If there are cracks or potholes in the concrete floor, some pellets may get stuck and need to be removed before applying any coating. Shot-blasting creates little dust and effectively removes laitance from cement floors. However, it may be too effective for hand-floated floors, leaving a surface too rough for varnish or thin paint. It also works well on asphalt and horizontal steel surfaces.
Diamond Grinding
If you need to remove thickness from a floor, Rifa Flooring starts with a high-speed DFG grinder, followed by a planetary diamond grinder.
The planetary diamond grinder has four heads that spin in opposite directions for a smoother surface, which is helpful for painting. We use synthetic diamonds for concrete grinding because the abrasive discs contain these particles.
Larger diamonds are for removing tough coatings, while smaller diamonds are for polishing. We also offer diamond floor sawing and core drilling to cut sections of floors for drainage installation.
To test the strength of concrete, we often use cylinders that have been field-cured, a method used since the early 19th century. For floors with existing coatings, we can do light surface abrasion when heavy grinding isn’t needed.
If you want to learn more about our flooring solutions, please contact Rifa Flooring.
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Contact Rifa Flooring for customized industrial flooring solutions. We offer free advice and can provide a price range on your first call.