ForConstructionPros.com

A polished concrete floor can be a great option for contractors to offer customers. But what do you do if the customer is a 24-hour grocery store? Plan properly and choose the right products. That's what NW Supply, Portland, Ore., did with a recent 40,000-square-foot polishing job.

To work around the store's 24-hour schedule, employees and customers, NW Supply held multiple meetings with the store personnel and its own employees, says Michael Henry, NW Supply's general manager for the specialty flooring division. In an initial meeting with store personnel, Henry split the floor into sections and planned out which section would be polished when.

Both the store and NW Supply designated a "lead person" for the job. These lead people met before each section was polished to move any necessary obstacles and then they met again after a section was finished to put it back in order, Henry says.

But resolving the challenge of working in an open, 24-hour grocery store that could not shut down for a period of days presented a bigger challenge. To achieve this, NW Supply used the Lythic Densifier - a colloidal silica - from Lythic Solutions.

On previous polished concrete Henry used sodium silicates. "Sodium silicates have to be scrubbed in with a machine and water, and it gets a little sloppy. Then you have to let it sit overnight, rehydrate and finally clean up the gel," he explains.