Can this scrubber clean unfinished concrete floors

Right, sealer it is!

-- Resolve to be thyself: and know, that he who finds himself, loses his misery. -- Matthew Arnold

Yup, that is the stuff. We have been using it for 11 years. Does get lost in the cracks, but after the first time, the cracks are full!

Paul

Grainger only has the Green in little sacks, I'm sure other suppliers have it in the bigger fiber drums and boxes. (tappa tappa tappa) ...

Yup, McMaster shows the Red (Petroleum) and Green (Wax) and a Biodegradable Tan Soybean Oil based, in 100# and 300# drums. I'm sure there's a big cleaning supplies house like Waxie near you.

If the floor is sealed & painted or has floor tiles, you get the Green colored sweeping compound that is Wax based and no sand or grit, and the Tan is good when you don't want to make more Hazmat. The Waste Management folks can't complain about putting the Green or Tan in the regular trash.

Like a lot of commodities, Sawdust and Sand and a little Oil are relatively cheap - packaging (empty fiber drum, lid, liner bag) and shipping is most of the cost. Go for the big drum once every two years, not a small bag every two months. If it's made regionally, sometimes you can get credit back on a good used drum return.

Unless you get a better deal on a whole pallet of bags at Will Call - they forklift load, give them an exchange pallet if they want a deposit, you forklift unload and stick it in the Steel Racking...

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I'm betting it can, but they're going to try to sell you some expensive brushes.

They don't use brushes, they use circular 3M type greenie pads in various levels of aggressiveness. Not particularly expensive, but they won't last long on rough concrete.

For almost *any* reference level for 0 dB. :-)

Enjoy, DoN.

Actually, they could sell you an expensive Diamond Stone Disc for a floor buffer, and you can do your own terrazzo grinding. It's a bare brush wheel sized for your machine (14" to 18" OD) with a dozen or so "pucks" of diamond-embedded brass bolted on to grind the floor flat. Lots of water, and you'll knock the high spots off the sand and gravel in the floor in short order.

Then you rinse and hand-squeegee the floor to get the worst of the concrete dust out the back door, and get the rest with your new NSS scrubber.

NOW you seal-coat or paint the floor, before the oil soaks into the newly cleaned floor.

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That works for terrazzo that's already smooth on a low speed machine, but to do a practical job on concrete you need something like this:

Even then you'll be using a lot of plugs and then diamond pucks. It's an expensive process but worthwhile for a big box store like Costco.

I think it's oiled sawdust (not sand). Unsealed concrete will get oily.

Joe Gwinn

No, Joe. It's sand. I used oiled sawdust on concrete once a week back in

1950's when I worked after school in a grocery store. Dust mopped the rest of the week.

This is oiled sand. We are in the Central Oregon desert when there is ALWAYS dust settling out of the air. I wanted something to pick up and hold the dust and something that was abrasive to help keep the concrete clean.

The concrete in both the store and my plant has/had the normal sealing put on fresh concrete and nothing more. We need clean bare concrete to control the ESD. All employees wear conductive foot straps on both feet, as well as wrist strap grounded to the work area or machine. The bare concrete is conductive enough to drain away any personally generated static electricity.

Each material has it's place. The amount of oil on the sand is never enough to transfer permanently to the concrete. I suppose if fresh sand was left in a pile on the floor long enough, you would see oil, but that doesn't happen. As soon as the sand picks up dust, it's pretty well locked in.

Paul

That's the stuff I remember.

I never heard of oiled sand, but OK.

What I saw done at a nearby air base in Mass was to wash and wax the concrete floors weekly. This depleted the local dust supply, and tended to keep everything else clean. [The wax wouldn't make much of an electrical insulator.]

What do you make?

Or, you grind away the surface faster than the oil can soak in?

Joe Gwinn

Actually you do not have to have clean bare concrete. You can buy conductive wax.

I worked at a facility where leg stats were required and after you put on leg stats you had to use a continuity tester to verify the leg stats were providing continuity from one leg to the other. As I remember after the floors were waxed, they were tested for conductivity, and then there was a monthly check of floor conductivity to ensure they remained conductive. There were also scheduled tests of the earth's conductivity and of the lightning masts.

Dan

Yes, each employee is required to test the foot stats each morning and log in the results. A foot is placed on the tester and a conductive push button switch is pressed. A light shows a good test. Guess it is a meg-ohm meter. If I work out in the assembly area, I have to do the same. Then each employee wears a jacket with conductive threads in it, and then a wrist band is connected to the bench ground. All benches are covered with conductive rubber matting.

I like the least cost method of controlling static electricity. Besides, I don't own the building.

We primarily assemble printed circuit boards for various customers in Oregon. One in California and one big one headquartered in Phoenix, AZ. They have a final assembly shop about 2 miles from my plant, so, except for engineering stuff, we work with the Redmond, OR shop.

We do complete box builds for a few customers, as well as repairs and calibrations for them. We also build a few custom cables.

Most of the work is surface mount with some through hole components. Most of the work, now, is using lead-free solder because the products sometimes are exported to Europe.

Paul

We worked with explosives and propellants.

Dan

It will do a decent job with smooth concrete. It will not do well on rough or uneven surfaces. GregO