Polished concrete floors tend to be found more industrial and retail settings, but are becoming increasingly popular in residential situations. When you consider their practical nature, you can start to see why. Alternatives such as floor tiles are often very expensive. I have struggled to find information on potential suppliers based here in the UK – let alone try to find someone who is relatively local!
 Polished concrete floor |
| HTC Superfloor – www.lazenby.co.uk |
Here’s some example floor finishes below. Unfortunately, from a company in Australia – but it does show the different colours that can be achieved. If only, I could find someone in the UK that can deliver a similar range of finishes.
We have a similar house to you also in West Yorkshire(halifax) and we are seriously considering a heated polished concrete floor, my wife knows of a company who does it industrially so i’m sure they would do some residential.
Where in Huddersfield are you? We did live in Slaithwaite.
We are in Thongsbridge, just outside of Holmfirth. I haven’t had much success finding a supplier, but to be honest, I haven’t spent a huge amount of time researching this yet. However, I need to as it isn’t going to be that long before we are going to need to sort this out.
Any leads gratefully received.
Stephen.
I’m looking for any ideas with my existing slab. We have 75mm of gyvlon with uf heating. It has been down 2 years and I’m looking for an alternative to tiles, hardwood etc. is there a method of applying a thin self leveller over the top which can be finished, or can my existing slab be ground & polished up? Or can I use resin as a solution?? Clueless really & looking for inspiration.. Any ideas would be great. Cheers. John
I can’t comment on polishing Gyvlon as I haven’t come across it before. I think your best bet is to ask them the question directly.
In terms of alternative flooring, I found that I ended up looking at commercial/retail finishes. The problem with this is that most residential properties aren’t going to be big enough to justify the cost. The majority of the cost seems to be equipment – if you are polishing 1000 sqm, it probably makes sense. If you are polishing 25 sqm, it starts to get expensive. When I looked into this a while ago, some of the figures that I was being quoted were between £7,000 – £10,000 for 50 sqm. I got the feeling that they weren’t interested in residential work. Shame, as I think polished concrete/resin looks great.
I tried looking for a local installer in the hope that they might be more interested in a smaller job. But I had no luck.
There are a number of big companies around that do this sort of thing for commercial and retail premises. Have you had a look at Ecofloor? http://www.resinflooring.com/index-1.html They seem to have some interesting ideas on their website. Since some of their covering at 8-10mm, I would assume that this are laid on top of an existing substrate. You would need to ensure that it could be bonded to the Gyvlon.
Sorry I can’t be of more help. Do let me know how you get on. I still haven’t given up on this idea ourselves yet! We still have the floor in the extension to lay.
Hi I live in Hepworth and am about to add concrete floor polishing to the existing services that I offer. I notice you now have wood and other floor coverings in your house. Was it just too difficult to find a contractor to do the polishing work or was the price too high? I am wanting to test the market for this work as I already have the machinery to carry out this service. I would be interested in any feedback on your investigations into companies offering this service. I will be targeting small domestic jobs not commercial work
many thanks
Graeme
Hiya,
I would love to have installed polished concrete floors, particularly in the kitchen and utility room. However, I struggled to find a local contractor that was interested in such a small area. It seemed that the local contractors were only interested in large commercial properties.
I could find companies in the London area, but then the costs were prohibitive. From talking to these contractors, the price didn’t really have a direct relationship to the floor area. In other words, it would take (say) three days to do the work whether it was 50 sqm or 75 sqm. On our project, we have installed 60 sqm of tiles in the kitchen, utility room and boot room.
I suspect that there is significant interest in polished concrete, particularly with contemporary and high end projects. Our architects thought it was a great idea, but even they were a little cautious about finding someone local to do the work.
Another indication is that “Polished concrete floors” remains one of the most popular search terms that brings people to this blog. Not all of this interest is local, but it does prove that it is a product/service that people are looking for.
Hope this helps. Feel free to drop me a line directly (stephen_gale@compuserve.com) if I can be of any more help.
Cheers,
S.
Hi,my name is abednego from indonesia..i am very interested with your polished concrete without exposing aggregate ..but the result is so amazing, very flat..how to do that? Wish you can share the technique, thans
Best regards