Getting The Best Result Out Of Your Full-Track Power Trowel

Getting the most as of your FULL-TRACK Power Trowel

Finishing concrete has continually been about timing: being in the precise place at the right time with the proper device. Good power troweling techniques are essential since floor uniformity is dependent directly on a finisher's capacity to run trowel machines.

The right instrument and time

The reasons of power floating are: to embed the considerable aggregate just beneath the surface of mortar

To eradicate slight imperfections, humps, or voids to compact the concrete and consolidate mortar at the surface in preparation for further finishing operations. As I mentioned, timing is everything in finishing. The rule of thumb when to power float a floor is that your footprint should be 1/4 inch deep or less, with little or no bleed water at hand. Most floors that result in low F-numbers are the direct outcome of finishers receiving on a floor extremely premature with power trowels and making lumps and bumps. Remember, this is the most plastic state that the floor will exist in during a power floating progression. Timing is everything — poor timing causes finishing troubles. Additionally bear in mind that any finishing operation done while there is excess dampness or bleed water on the surface can cause dusting or scaling.

Choosing a walk-behind trowel

When choosing a walk-behind power trowel, you should be concerned about square footage/meterage, quantity of floor penetrations, concrete temperature, air temperature, wind, and comparative humidity, along with mix design. Here are the suggested uses for a variety of kinds of walk-behind trowels:

Full-Track rotor trowel (32-inch diameter): used mostly on edges, patios, basements, and driveways, small pours.

Full-Track rotor power trowel (36-inch diameter): used on small to medium pours, all types of floors.

Full-Track rotor power trowel (48-inch diameter): used on average to big pours, all types of floors.

Full-Track 2 rotor power trowel (Ride-on 36-inch diameter): used on medium to significant pours all kinds of floors; Floating Blades suggested

Using float blades with walk- behind trowels is at this moment an accepted practice because float blades can improve floor uniformity dramatically by eradicating surface imperfections and by improving the consolidation and compaction of the concrete surface. Float blades are used on the majority of flooring when a high spec floor is necessary. When using float blades:

Make a smallest amount of two passes

Make each pass perpendicular to the earlier pass

The more float blade passes, the flatter the floor

Run a pattern—don't wander all over the floor

After the last float pass on a floor, instantaneously begin the initial troweling cycle at 90 degrees to the previous pass. For this transition—floating to troweling—combination blades are incredibly helpful. Be sure to run the blades of the troweling machine flat or with a very trivial pitch on the first pass (and at a slow speed). Each additional troweling pass raises the compaction of the fines at the surface and decreases the water cementitious materials ratio of the concrete near the slab surface. The trowel blades agitate surface paste and hasten the evaporation rate of water inside the paste.

With each successive pass, increase the blades of the troweling machine to enable the finisher to apply sufficient pressure for proper finishing. Chatter marks on a floor are a result of the blades being raised extremely high, too premature, or too quick for floor conditions.

For the finest results, the high performance ride-on trowels are the most powerful on the market plus are used on as rule considerable commercial projects. These riders produce good horsepower-to-weight ratios and will offer superior finishes.