The story…

The home was built in Woodbury Minnesota in the mid 90′s. What exactly went wrong with this garage floor from the beginning is really a mystery. With just a quick look, you can tell that something is not right.

The floor surface was wavey from poor placement and lack of finishing.

The surface has shown signs of deterioration almost from the start claimed the homeowner.

The homeowner had used a “do it yourself epoxy kit” 3  times within the past 4 years, he had even glued on sections of carpet to attempt to salvage this mangled floor.

Solution…

Grind it all down and see what we have to work with. We equipped our Fast Prep grinder/polisher with 25 grit tooling and we hit it hard.

It took 3 passes over the floor to remove enough material to make it smooth and monolithic.

We ground off as much as 1/4 of an inch over some areas and generated over 90 gallons of grinding dust and all of this was completed within 45 minutes.

For us, it was like mowing on the lawn.

Conclusion…

Without our Fast Prep grinder/polisher and our CDC Larue vacs, we could not have even attempted this job because the customer would have been unwilling to pay for the labor time of 2 days using standard equipment.

Once more, our Fast Prep grinder/polisher gave us the competitive advantage and ability to complete projects of this caliber in a timely and cost effective manner.

Customer comment: I can’t believe you got all that off and is now level.

My comment: Who said speed kills?

Here in Minnesota with our world renowned snow and cold weather, comes road salt, used in huge quantities. A lot of that salt ends up right in the garage which deteriorates the garage floor surface.

In this area, we have become crack specialists, consuming gallons upon gallons of crack and surface repair material on our projects. In the past, it would take hours of grinding off the access repair material to get a smooth surface ready for coating. With our Fast Prep grinder/polisher the floating heads, over-sized motor and tooling has reduced our crack repair griding down to minutes from hours.

Question…

How fast is too fast?

Question: How do I get from this, to that?

There are hundreds of equipment manufacturers of grinders/polishers available in dozens of configurations. Of course they will all work to some degree or another.

Scenario…

Now you have a grinder, you’re on the job and you just hit the wall, or as we call it, the variable. It may be previous coatings, deep spalled areas, hard power troweled surface, curing agents, sealers, fly ash, your repair material on the surface, curling at saw cuts and tool joints… Now the challenge starts.

Before we purchased the Fast Prep grinder/polisher to compensate for the variables in each prep project we had to carry 5 types of machines to do the work.

• 7 inch stand up edge grinder
• 10 inch high speed grinder
• 20 inch variable speed planetary
• 21 inch heavy weight 6 tool grinder
• 18 inch floor buffer/sander

Most of our prep jobs required 4 out of the 5 machines to complete the job. Yes, my 16 foot trailer was full and the time and labor involved with loading and unloading was tiresome.

Solution…

With our Fast Prep grinder/polisher we have permanently removed and sold 4 of the 5 pieces of equipment in our operation.

The variable no longer exists in our business model. We can simply adjust the Fast Prep grinder/polisher to the existing floor conditions with quick-change tooling plates, variable speed control, add/remove weights and quick adjust wheel height. These unique features have consistently cut our prep costs by 60+%.

Our new business model is this; we get the job done on time, no excuses. We get home early, my guys aren’t worn out and my truck and trailer has lost weight, about a thousand pounds.

Note: The only machine I kept of the 5 was the 7 inch stand up edge grinder, I hate working on my knees.

1,000 sq/ft of epoxy floor, just a few years old. The customer complained that the floor had been stained, cracked and was hard to clean. This Minnetonka, MN home needed a re-coat.

Our Goals…

Get a mechanical bond for guaranteed adhesion without removing the exising coating.

Using our Fast Prep grinder, we set our speed control to 700 rpm and used 80 grit stones. With this brute, light touch and versatile of a machine,  in 40 minutes, we had 30 gallons of debris in our vac and were ready to re-coat.

Conclusion…

With the versatility of the Fast Prep machine, it has given our business more opportunities for customer satisfaction and of course all of our goals, increased efficiency and revenue.