Twelve tools.
Nothing hired in.
The load-out on the home page says what comes off the truck. This says what each thing is for: what it does to your slab, and what a floor laid without it does eighteen months later. Every plate is here to be checked against what turns up on the day.
Twelve plates, one frame, one size, read in the order they touch the concrete.
Nothing is poured onto a slab we have not opened first. Everything in this group is a wear part: it is bought to be used up.
01
The first pass on a rough slab, and the only head that goes near a wall line or a corner a planetary machine cannot reach.
Without itThe edges stay high. You see it as a dark border round every room the day the light goes on.
02
The edge’s second pass. The double row opens the perimeter fast and leaves its own scratch behind; this takes that out and brings the border down to the same finish as the open floor.
Without itA ground border that is flatter than the rest of the room but rougher, and it takes the coating differently; you read it as a halo round the walls once the floor is wet.
03
The coarse metal bond that takes the slab open and leaves the profile a primer can key into. Three passes before a single pail is opened.
Without itAn acid etch instead: an hour of work instead of a day, and a floor that comes off in sheets inside two years.
04
The refining head. It takes out the scratch the coarse pass left, so the primer sits on a flat plane rather than a ploughed one.
Without itGrinder swirls telegraph through the topcoat and read as circles under any raking light.
05
The whole ladder, carried on every job. Grit is chosen off the slab in front of us, not off the quote.
Without itOne grit for every floor, which means the wrong grit for most of them.
Two minutes decide the next ten years. Most failed floors we are called out to repair failed in the pail, not in the tin.
06
Two minutes at a controlled speed with the sides scraped, then decanted into a clean pail so nothing unmixed rides the walls into the floor.
Without itSoft patches that never cure. They are invisible on day one and obvious by month three.
From here the resin is live and the clock is running. These four are what stand between a pour and a finished floor.
07
This is what decides whether you paid for 2 mm of resin and got 2 mm. The notch is set to the spec before the pail is opened.
Without itResin spread by eye: thick where it was easy, thin where it mattered, and billed the same either way.
08
For the work the rake cannot reach (coves, thresholds, the metre nearest a wall), held at the same film as the open floor.
Without itA ridge where the edge work meets the pour, right where the light from the door lands on it.
09
Run across the wet film inside the open time to let the air the mix carried in escape before the resin stiffens over it.
Without itPinholes. Thousands of them, each one a place the floor can be lifted from later.
10
They are what lets a man stand in a live pour at all. The holes they leave close behind him while the resin is still moving.
Without itThe floor is laid from the edges by someone who cannot walk on it, and the joins show where he stopped.
Silica and amine hardener are the two things on site that hurt people. We show the kit because most quotes never mention it.
11
Worn for the grind and again for the pour. The cartridge is for solvent and amine vapour; the dust class is what the grind needs.
Without itSilica in the lungs, which is the one thing on this site that does not show up for twenty years.
12
Changed between coats rather than washed. Hardener on a glove is hardener on the next surface that glove touches.
Without itContact dermatitis for the crew, and fingerprints in the finish for you.
