Well add me to the long list of those who said grinding a floor for epoxy, sucks. 10 plus hours of grinding and it's still not right. Here is how my weekend went. I have read and searched on here until I am blue in the face and thought I had a good plan to get this done.
Pickup an Edco 10" grinder and dustless vacuum from home depot at noon Saturday and after talking to the guy, actually convinced him to swap the disc out with a brand new one. This one uses a disc/blade, not inserts. Maybe that was part of the issue???
Get home and a friend joins me for what we assume to be many hours of grinding and sweeping...and it was. We picked a square, about 150 sq ft, and grinded and moved and grinded and moved...It just wasn't doing that much and he tried, I tried, we added 100 lbs worth of dumbbells, which helped but not much. After about 2 hours of grinding on that one square, we moved on.
I know the dang thing would cut because when you hit a high spot, it just ate it up. This concrete seems to be VERY hard, which I expected. I think the blade is having a hell of a time getting through the hard power troweled surface.
So of course I have read about the diamabrush...some good some bad. We were very frustrated in the edco so while he grinded (well attempted too), I ran to home depot and got a diamabrush. They did not have floor machine with vac attachment so he said use a buffer that has one. So I rented that. Let me tell you, this thing was laughable. We ran this thing on a square in the same spot for about 10 minutes and it hadn't even scratched the smooth concrete. I am sure it could have used some extra weight but since HD said get it back within 2 hours and I will give your money back, we just took it back.
So, back to the Edco. It never got any better, we did the entire floor this way, spending about an hour on each square going forward, taking turns. The end result is the entire floor still needs more work to be porous and/or have a sandpaper feel.
My dilemma is what to do next. I am $250 in to this point on rentals. I have the Nohr-S system sitting in the house waiting. Temps are steadily getting lower at night (in West TN). My initial thought is to get the 7" grinder and dust deputy and do a few squares a day (1600 sq ft total). I would be willing to rent another machine if there was one that would finish the job, but I have zero faith in the Edco, at least using the blade that I had on it. There are other rental places around here that you buy your own inserts. There is a place here that has the Husq P280 dual head, again i have to buy the inserts. It will cost me another $400 for that and inserts for 24 hours.
here are some pics of the concrete and what it looks like. You can even see rocks in some spots, but it still doesnt feel very rough, and it is not porous. I put some water on a couple spots, 2 hours later its still there.
Pickup an Edco 10" grinder and dustless vacuum from home depot at noon Saturday and after talking to the guy, actually convinced him to swap the disc out with a brand new one. This one uses a disc/blade, not inserts. Maybe that was part of the issue???
Get home and a friend joins me for what we assume to be many hours of grinding and sweeping...and it was. We picked a square, about 150 sq ft, and grinded and moved and grinded and moved...It just wasn't doing that much and he tried, I tried, we added 100 lbs worth of dumbbells, which helped but not much. After about 2 hours of grinding on that one square, we moved on.
I know the dang thing would cut because when you hit a high spot, it just ate it up. This concrete seems to be VERY hard, which I expected. I think the blade is having a hell of a time getting through the hard power troweled surface.
So of course I have read about the diamabrush...some good some bad. We were very frustrated in the edco so while he grinded (well attempted too), I ran to home depot and got a diamabrush. They did not have floor machine with vac attachment so he said use a buffer that has one. So I rented that. Let me tell you, this thing was laughable. We ran this thing on a square in the same spot for about 10 minutes and it hadn't even scratched the smooth concrete. I am sure it could have used some extra weight but since HD said get it back within 2 hours and I will give your money back, we just took it back.
So, back to the Edco. It never got any better, we did the entire floor this way, spending about an hour on each square going forward, taking turns. The end result is the entire floor still needs more work to be porous and/or have a sandpaper feel.
My dilemma is what to do next. I am $250 in to this point on rentals. I have the Nohr-S system sitting in the house waiting. Temps are steadily getting lower at night (in West TN). My initial thought is to get the 7" grinder and dust deputy and do a few squares a day (1600 sq ft total). I would be willing to rent another machine if there was one that would finish the job, but I have zero faith in the Edco, at least using the blade that I had on it. There are other rental places around here that you buy your own inserts. There is a place here that has the Husq P280 dual head, again i have to buy the inserts. It will cost me another $400 for that and inserts for 24 hours.
here are some pics of the concrete and what it looks like. You can even see rocks in some spots, but it still doesnt feel very rough, and it is not porous. I put some water on a couple spots, 2 hours later its still there.
