Polished concrete floors are not only hard wearing and extremely durable, they look great too.

There are a range of benefits of choosing a Polished Concrete floor for your home, business or industrial space. The hard wearing nature of a polishing concrete floor means it’s easy to clean, mould-resistant, cost effective and most appealingly is the smooth, stylish, high quality finish.

Hard Yards uses the HTC Superfloor grinding and polishing method. This method mechanically refines the concrete surface by removing the top cement layer and exposing the underlying, stronger concrete material. Grinding the concrete is the most efficient method of removing unevenness and imperfections from a concrete floor surface to achieve an attractive, smooth finish when the polish is applied.

Using a diamond grinding machine, the concrete surface is levelled while revealing the stone in the concrete resulting in a hard-wearing and very aesthetically appealing concrete finish.

Several factors will affect the final appearance when polishing concrete:

• Concrete quality;
• Colour of cement;
• Stone quality and colouring; and,
• Grinding depth.The grinding depth will affect how much the stones inside the concrete are exposed and therefore results in in variations of the aesthetical appearance of the final polished flooring surface.

The HTC Superfloor method used by Hard Yards is available in four different concepts to suit varying tastes and purposes. These are Platinum, Gold, Silver and Bronze – each with their own unique features described below.

Platinum

Platinum is the concept that gives the floor the best characteristics as it involves more grinding steps than other methods. The Platinum method involves grinding away the concrete skin and exposing the underlying, stronger concrete, in the form of fine material, gravel and where possible the aggregate. Due to the nature of the concrete construction, the larger aggregate may be exposed unevenly in the surface. Normally, 2 – 3 mm of the surface is ground away in this process.

Gold

This method involves grinding away the concrete skin and exposing the underlying, stronger concrete, in the form of fine material. Normally, 1 mm of the surface is ground away. HTC Superfloor™ Gold assumes the concrete surface is smooth before starting the grinding and polishing, because the first rough grinding step is omitted.

Silver

Silver is the concept to choose if you want to obtain the characteristics of a well-ground floor and a matt surface. The result is an unbeatably durable floor. This method involves grinding away the concrete skin and exposing the underlying, stronger concrete, in the form of fine material, gravel and where possible the aggregate.

Due to the nature of the concrete construction, the larger aggregate may be exposed unevenly in the surface. Normally, 2 – 3 mm of the surface is ground away.

Bronze

Bronze is a concept solely consisting of polishing steps. This concept does not expose fine material, gravel or larger aggregates. The concrete skin is polished without grinding it away. Importantly, the concrete surface must be smooth with a good surface treatment during casting. Irregularities in the concrete surface’s colour and appearance will not be removed by polishing.

For full details on the HTC Superfloor standards – visit the HTC Website here.