Commercial flooring installation
A floor that keeps working while you do
Commercial and industrial floors have been part of this business since 2004. Warehouse bays, corridors, production areas, back of house and storage: the slab is usually sound and simply never finished, so it sheds dust, soaks up whatever lands on it and looks tired long before it is worn out.
Two routes solve most of it. Polishing hardens and shines the slab you have, with nothing on top to fail. A resin coating puts a new wear surface down where you need chemical resistance or a specific color. Rick looks at the room, the traffic and your schedule and tells you which.
Tell us what happens in the space. Call Elite Concrete Floors.
Can you work around our opening hours?
That is normally how it goes. We section the floor so part of the space stays in use while the rest is ground and coated, and we schedule the noisy work and the cure time outside your busiest windows where we can. It takes longer overall than emptying the building, but nobody loses a week of trading. The thing that cannot be rushed is cure time between coats, so the plan gets written down first and you know exactly which bay or which corridor is out of action on which day. The same discipline applies on every floor we take on.
What stops a commercial coating failing early?
Preparation, almost every time. A resin floor in a working building has to be mechanically keyed into concrete that has been diamond ground open, with every trace of old coating, sealer, curing compound and oil taken off first. Oil is the one people underestimate: it soaks deep into a slab in a workshop and it has to be drawn out or ground past, not painted over. The International Concrete Repair Institute profiles exist precisely because different systems need different surface textures underneath.
Book a walk around of your floor
Free, no obligation. Rick looks at the slab, the traffic and your hours, then puts a plan in writing.
Call (724) 313-7520Which finish suits which kind of building?
Warehouses, distribution space and big open floors usually want a polish: it takes hard wheeled traffic, needs no waxing and brightens the room on the fixtures you already have. Workshops, plant rooms and anywhere with chemicals or heavy impact usually want a resin build, because you can spec it for what actually lands on the floor. Retail, offices and back of house often go polished with a stain for the look. Restaurants and wash down areas need slip resistance built into the topcoat. The right answer depends on the room, and the resin side of it is covered on our epoxy flooring page.
What about old industrial buildings?
Western Pennsylvania has a lot of them, and they are some of the best floors we get to work on. Old slabs in converted mills and brick warehouses are often thick, dense and full of character once they are ground open, which is exactly what a polish or a stain shows off. They also come with fifty years of patches, saw cuts, bolt holes and coatings to deal with, so the prep is the long part. If the surface is too broken to take a finish, polishing is out and the room needs a new wear layer instead.
Ask the guy doing the work
Straight answers about your concrete floor questions
How big a floor will you take on?
From a single back of house room up to warehouse bays. Rick has been doing residential, commercial and industrial floors since 2004. Tell him the square footage and what happens in the space and he will tell you straight whether it suits us.
Do we have to close while you work?
Usually not. We section the floor so part of the building stays in use, and we plan the noisy work and the cure time around your hours. The schedule goes in writing before we start.
Our floor has oil soaked into it. Is that a problem?
It is the most common one in a workshop, and it has to be dealt with before any coating goes down. Grinding removes the contaminated surface, and badly soaked areas may need drawing out first. A coating over oil will not stick.
Can you make the floor non slip?
Yes. A non slip additive goes into the topcoat, and the amount is set by how the room gets used. Wash down areas, kitchens and ramps get more of it than a dry storage aisle does.
Will a polished floor stand up to forklifts?
That is one of the places it does best. There is no coating to chip or peel, the densifier hardens the slab itself, and hard wheels do not mark it the way they can mark a resin floor.
Do you handle line marking?
Ask Rick at the walk around. Traffic lanes, bay markings and safety lines can be worked into the finish, and it is far easier to plan them before the topcoat than to add them afterwards.