well hello and welcome to another edition of design for the times i'm your host richard christopher scary i'm very happy to have in studio someone that i worked with quite a long time ago but that was quite concrete floors welcome to our show todd thanks for having me it's nice to see you after all this time it's kind of serendipity is that this all came to be and again it came to be very quickly because i'm starting to work on a wonderful new restaurant in new providence new on the project we worked on we had worked on a project in lebanon new jersey called the metropolitan seafood in gourmet really nice upscale fishmonger and all sorts of other things and i always remember you know how transformative that was that was about ten years or so ago and at the time i thought polish concrete tile i mean i thought what the heck is this right it was amazing and i don't think anything no tile as beautiful as how convey would create the look that that created especially for  the origin of polished concrete floors you know i did coatings for hotels and tactile pools for many years ok coatings had issues they failed a lot so when i would go to shows there was guys there selling polished equipment and i just took interest in it and i love the look right so early and i just love doing a job leaving it and not having a call back for something that's failed product wise it just comes out where is the first time you saw somebody use an application where they did polish concrete here so process marble ises the slab to where it becomes a bowling almost like a bowling ball and it just has a reflective it is glass so let's start with the process from the beginning are most of the projects for polished concrete are most of the projects you work on somebody else's concrete that they poured a long time ago that you're coming into i would guess cleaning and then polishing or you ever going in and you are poor in the concrete yourself all of the above we get calls from us to pour in pump we have to get the concrete into locations they can't do and basically we just facilitate getting them that finished ok if somebody else pours it that's fine we'll come in after and and take care of it all the buildings in jersey city we do and then if it's more or less a homeowner they're more like you're taking up old products and trying to get down to the concrete is it almost nicer to have old contrie concrete because it has aging and changing into history so it's much more interesting the result because of what's going on there sometimes if you look at beautiful natural stone you see fossils and stuff there's a same thing hold true for a new slab of concrete as one that's from that was  character so so it would actually be the best i like that let's talk about the layers and then you have some wonderful examples that we're going to talk about in our our viewers are going to be able to say the the process obviously if you're if you're doing a fresh poor concrete sets gray and then dries to sort of a white color right for the most part of the month for you if you were going to create an end look that was like a dark charcoal color or a dark color would you add a color additive to the fresh concrete sure i mean if there's a color request with it's very common will put it into the so let's say you wanted something really moderate and you would add like an added to that made it sort of like a dark gray color right and then how long would that have to cure before you were able to polish it to give it the finish look you know it's recommended twenty eight days or that long but from a four inch pour ok i've seen where you can put in additives we don't recommend it but you can accelerate it up to about ten to fifteen days we don't actually do that is it more exciting for you from the fresh poor to get the color that you're looking for advice by tinting it or is it much more appealing to you to start with something that's or that you take the gluey floor off and you do a cleaning process and then you're curious to see what comes up i have to say i like that the best i love when there's products on top nobody really knows what's down there and then we do it the the difference is so extreme sure it just it cleans very well and he just pops what's what would you say the best applications for i would imagine anything retail polished concrete is probably ideal right sure it's relatively easy to clean very easy to claim and then we're talking about support when you clean it not to use a high ph product right do not use for cleaners products concrete is not so for any sort of i think commercial application in a hotel i was in a hotel long island city about three or four months ago really modern hotel and they had some polish concreted just made the space right industrial look maybe a clothing boutique restaurant shops or so on maybe a mall or a mall but how about on the residential side are you seeing people i don't know what percentage of your clientele is wanting to put it in their own home you know it's becoming basically mainstream i mean at this point they're making choices to get it sure so i would imagine just off the top of my head that if they were putting it in somewhere in their house they would be puttin a it's very sharp maybe you do sort of mid century kind of with that right for sure they saw cuts and you can make any design you want amazing diet so not just basement but let's go to the basement because this is something we talked about before cameras started to roll here was that the fact that you know the climate change and the storms that we're having in the flooding like never before and so many people so many of my clients throughout the state had to redo their basements and they went with carpet because it was expensive and warm which is a disaster grade in mold and celeron are and it's not only that it doesn't create mallette actually acts as a wake ok so when you put products down in the basement setting and you have the proper vapor vapor come through that's the damaging weight and i'm waving and you're breathing that so let's say we finish our basement kids want to go down there there's a flood god forbid or maybe the hot water heater you know they went away for the weekend and that are they gave out now you have this what carpet your remove the carpet the carpet was glued down what's your next step to get to a surface that you can do something clear what do you do our machines will strip the carpet the glue right off and then you just bring it up from there meaning so is that its own polishing to get the glue off or is very rough grind it's a diamond head surely actually stripped off all the coatings down to the core of the slab no acid washing no any sort of chemicals or things like that well i thought that would be part of the process that's very interesting you know we don't like to use products like that what about in a residential application having that be dust less how do you make that work let's say somebody wants to do that in their their home and it is you know it is on the first floor they say on the slab is there a way to sort of isolate that cause i would ninety nine percent of the dust that airborne crews are vacuum system the rest of it is on the floor and that surely we can collect that and that we have basically units about the size of this table here that will collect any extra airborne dust that to new code from osha as you turn it on it cleans out fifteen six hundred cubic feet and here going to you can stand and talk like we are with grinding machines let's say somebody is doing their basement and again there was a water issue they take it out with ever be instead of dealing with the original let's say the concrete isn't even or there's lots of cracks in the concrete do you ever do a top poor and level it out and then polish over that as opposed to the original you can you had meant you had mentioned something earlier on about four inches so let's say there was an original poor and it was less than four inches now imagine just by grinding you're taking it down do you need that four inches to make it work no i'm not you could go down to three inches i've got what we've ground three inches of concrete also grind overlays are nice i mean there's high strength the aside you can grind two inches but that's typically not what's poured in a slit in a basement they did typically pour three three thousand and thirty five hundred p s i that just sort of code a code it would you ever add or do you ever do a fresh pour on the surface sure what would be the reason you would do that for leveling or is a concrete did you ever go to a place and say sorry reject it can't do it absolutely zero do i do that all the time what would be the reason that somebody couldn't have it done my first initiate initial is to test the concrete and see if it's what's called dusting if you're concrete is dusting basically means when they were pouring the concrete they mixed in too much water or they just didn't they do heated up too quickly something happened whatever i do for you you will not be satisfied again your floor is dusting so you want to keep coming out it doesn't stop now is it true about concrete in general i heard this when i was a kid my dad was both a tie and my dad was a general contractor that concrete continues to harden like it just continues doors to a point i mean depending on the sickness i mean a twenty eight days you're basically good for a four inch poor five inch bore so you're saying if it was new concrete it's twenty eight days before you would do the application of the polishing that's what we do that's the and that's based solely reaches sort of a certain maximum hardness right before and then first something that you look at it it's not dusting it's in good shape you can do it same day absolutely get right on it and typically unless the space is humongous like a one day process oh no it's involved it is about the need a thousand square feet could take us five days oh that involves very about me each step imagine each step of grinding you have to do every thousand square feet so if there's thirteen steps i have thirteen thousand square feet of work for for thirteen steps to get should i think what i'm looking at some how do you know when you're done how do you know when it's ready i look for reflectivity when i'm down at the end if i can look at the floor and i could see the light bulbs i know that i've reached the sheen level i'm looking for depending on what you want you were generous enough to bring us a lot of pictures so maybe you can pull up some of the images or we can talk about it so it's fun to talk about in theory but when you see it i think you feel quite differently now this is good because this is a project that we did together that this was c w i kitchens it was a cabinet manufacture right and then i did the design work and we converted into better politan seafood and gorham a wonderful fishmonger and gourmet market so let's go to maybe the next image there and that's what we did i guess about ten years ago right so i remember the concrete how horrible the concrete was and you know what i'm going to say that i was surprised you rejected because the concrete wasn't in great shape but it wasn't dusting that's a different s a different  don't i don't mind if it's in bad shape but i have a deteriorating ok you know this was in great shape sure let's see if we take another image of the the town's off something now want to talk about something i'm going to talk about i think you called it saw cuts because concrete is mix and poured all the channels in a certain way ok that is right them but now would that not let's say different circumstances would you have to for sort of a relief or is that when concrete is poured in general you have to have sort of cuts you do have to have expansion in most in most slabs ok but if if we don't see the correct expansion joints and see some hairline cracks that say coming off of something you can cut those in before we start and you would cut it have yourself ok let's see if the next one is there ok cool so you can see the reflectivity of the glass are so that you know i know the sheen level now i've walked on that now that looks like glass now i've walked on that and it was it was there was it was not slippery at all now though it looks like very how come it's not slippery the surface is polished but yet it's not a topical coating like a paint or an acrylic that's what slippery if i rolled on a seal or idiot sheet of ice yeah it looks it looks like it would be a sheet of ice but i mean i remember putting up the christmas decorations there and walking wish  floor just beautiful spectacular to see the reflectivity of the woman walking yes we can see her now i know we could see her her actually upside down i mean look at that right really it's really like glass ok let's see what else now this is a this is a different job now where it is a sin this isn't water street in new york and it was flooded underwater during hurricane sandy lower manhattan ok or may have been completely underwater that floor was doable even though i see unbelievable cracks there cracks and coatings and concrete but once we tested off ok so you got the old coatings off with the grinding process yes ok let's see what's next ok now now the grinding the coatings off ok so now we're down to the slab itself it seems like a change color or is it just the it's not for everyone but i'll if it was just so perfect i don't think it would be so industrial right now to me that cracks are interesting it's like if you have beautiful piece of stone you like to see the that there is credible character with that for many colors because you can teleport it in section here they probably did a kitchen one day and they were out here in another day and that it has it's own it is a you know a character it should work ok let's see what's next now is this the same as the same job home below now how come these are so much more these look so much more slick and polished this one actually has a solvent based sealer they requested to get the sheen up for whatever reason there was a reason in this particular area they wanted more sheen it was the reflectivity they weren't getting the older concrete sometimes you can't get the reflectivity that you saw in the metropolitan through this was one hundred years old right they wanted that love to get reflect the lights so they had no choice that looks like ice skating rink that you could walk on that without a problem you can you put in a slip resistant product in this in that i mean don't get me wrong it's just gorgeous but i mean it does look very slick it does but it you stepped on it there is a glass beads that we put in it to make it not slick wasn't interesting and actually looks more beautiful patterning but it looks more consistent to for some reason i think for whatever reason this ground we were able to grind this to get the rocks the way they must have ported the grokster at the surface so that actually dictates what rock it's going to look like that's exactly hate how it was there's no way to for me to tell you what you have i can't see it until we polish that we polish it that's really you know we don't know what's here first is over there sure what if they push the gravel down on this side and they could look like two completely no other tile nothing would pair as well with the old brick i think it just is that right it was perfect for that set and yeah exactly even the steel work they did with that complemented the floor and all the cracks this is awesome ok next one and that's the that you can tell that i agree with him on this point i think that was the look they wanted they weren't going to get that reflection without it i don't normally like to do that i like to go natural with the slab i almost like the more natural better i do  that's maybe because it's paired with the old brick i mean it's about vocations i do like the sheen but in this one i kind of like the naturalness of the thing with a sheen less and with a sealer that is that will fade back down ok i will absolutely poli like metropolitan right will hold that she has polished correctly and that p s i was correct so if you go in there right now that photo will still be relevant but isn't polish also protection because i will tell people because there was a period of time everybody is protection so the same thing holds true for you polish is protection while you're closing the pores right surface and you're also burning in minerals sure so to that would actually increase the p f i level at the surface  ok so this is the beginning you know we just got there and we're sitting knew this floor looks new to me not all it's a new building ok but you didn't pour this this was already there right it's a long strip of these guys and there's a  brewery on the side and some other shops ok great so the space was never finished no and we said all that way so for this i not like i love i love this result so tell me how you came up with this result i love the charcoal and  loved so what did you do to make this look like this i grounded all the way to the same finish as a whole foods which is high grit resolution and then we actually soaked in black dye diluted to get that effect and then your input did die after something is you could take a floor that's already cured and they had died to it yes and get it pigment takes for sure different the look that you get from the truck when it's poured will be different than the look that you would get from a liquid is not as intense it's a little more matte from the truck that is what or what i like about all this is that it seems to me know if this sounds odd but it's almost mad and shiny at the same time right you've reached butter can you like overdo it and some something get a bad result the only bad result is if they didn't want that sheen left it just keeps getting trying to figure it all max out if it doesn't break down or something after a certain point you  you're going to go out on ok let's see what else we have here and this is the one we talked about surf taco this why i love the record how different is ok so i started out with looks like i was a four year that was just on the side of a guy pretty bad effect exactly but you tallest right on this with all the different colors i ground everything off does that mean all the color came off all of it came off ok i don't know what do we do we get next and wow take a completely different thing now we've got a clean healthy surface that can breeze you know so you call the rock the aggregate yes i love that and you can see that that's a patch from a bag mix and you don't know what's under there when you're when you're dealing with there's another when there is there more aggregate there because it is a patch because it fill it out and i'll get the contact information to reflect i just think this is amazing it doesn't seem that a ton of people at least on the east coast do what you do do they it's definitely picking up popularity is that because the industrial look is becoming more popular now that and