Honed Concrete Outdoors
- Sunshine Coast
- Brisbane
- Regional Queensland
Brisbane North's External Concrete Honing Experts
Ultimate Floors are your specialists for creating durable honed concrete outdoors for areas around the home and commercial clients. The first external concrete honing project we produced was in 2006. As a result of this early pioneering, it is awesome to see how outdoor concrete honing has evolved and widely accepted for concrete landscaping, outdoor dining areas, shop fronts and renovating existing concrete pavements.
Having completed many hundreds of projects throughout South-East Queensland though now focus our services for localised concrete honing services for Brisbane North, Moreton Bay City region, Sunshine Coast and west to Toowoomba.
- Patio concrete honing
- Concrete honing pool surrounds
- Concrete honing footpaths and walkways
- Reface existing washed aggregate driveways
- Slip safe honed concrete outdoors for commercial shops and offices
Concrete Honing Slip Safe Surfaces
Honed concrete is often referred to as outdoor polished concrete but the designed process are quite different. In fact, is vitally important the concrete surface is slip safe as outlined in Australian Standards (AS/NZS 3661, 4586, 4663) to reduce risk and liability.
Polished concrete aggregate exposed outdoors is no doubt ideal for transforming plain concrete to a revealed aggregate finish without the sharp stones. Concrete is extremely strong, long lasting and an outstanding material to use as a design element. It is also a way to design the perfect honed concrete pool surround and shopping centre walkways.
Honed concrete process is perfect for a new concrete and also achieves great results to existing concrete as well. Ideal for both residential and commercial applications. Furthermore virtually any suitable on ground concrete pavement can receive our concrete honing process that is practical and looks great.
Our recommended honing and sealing concrete for outdoors is also slip compliant. Most of all will not have any UV light effects and cannot peel over time unlike general concrete sealers. Also, the natural concrete patina maintains its look and colour.
While it has become a popular alternative over other outdoor surfaces, many clients that contact us about grinding, honing and sealing external concrete don’t know how it all works. There are few finishes therefore we’ll briefly clarify the differences between honed concrete outdoors and internal polished floors below.
What is honed concrete - Which sealer is best?
Honed finish refers to the level surface texture created by cutting back the concrete top layer with resurfacing equipment.
For example, we will use a selection of diamond abrasives to get the desired amount of stones. We can vary the amount of stone during the first grinding cut to some point.
Of course concrete condition and quality of placement are a factor and no doubt leads to additional preparation time.
As a result, the most important part for outdoors is the surface being being safe when water wet.
Home or business, we ensure your honed concrete is slip safe.
Slip rating is commonly over looked for most external finishes and therefore, it is highly recommended consideration on external decorative finishes such as concrete honing fall within; Standards Australia – AS/NZS 3661, 4586, 4663 guidelines to reduce the risk of injury from incompatible foot wear / surface finish.
Honing and sealing external concrete is quite often called polished concrete, grind and seal and external polished concrete by mistake. We will take this opportunity to clarify the points of difference.
Polished concrete is for internal floors
Ultimate Floors honed concrete around pools, honed concrete paths and driveways have 2 or 3 grinding levels. Final grit is dependant on degree of slope to ensure the honed surface is slip safe when wet.
Our grinding to prepare and honing stages are typically completed at 60 grit minimum for inclines exceeding five degrees and to the most common 80 – 100 grit surface profile for flat concrete areas .
Do keep in mind first, that honed surface requires cleaning to ensure the surface is at the recommenced safe zone for foot traffic when water wet.
Each job is different
When choosing Ultimate Floors – Grinding and Polishing for honing and sealing external concrete, in return we take your overall objectives to propose suitable options as well.
- Alfresco areas
- Paths
- Balconies
- Shop fronts
- Pool surrounds
- Council footpaths
- Pool coping face
- Outdoor Dining
- Driveways
- Precast Walls
- Carports
- Seating & benches
- Surface applied coatings, or
- Impregnating sealing system (non film-forming)
- Ease of resealing
- Grip when water wet
- Achieving overall slip rating
We recommended impregnating sealers for honed finish outdoors. They are very stable, have minimal long term effect from UV exposure, easily re-applied while allowing excellent slip ratings to be achieved.
Enhance or Natural
When choosing that natural concrete colour look, you can choose between water or solvent based and our most common selected colour enhancing impregnate sealing system that pops the honed finish matrix resulting in a enhanced look.
Optional surface applied coatings are typically solvent acrylic for low key sheen or 2 part gloss,urethane coatings; provide excellent resistance to staining and are aesthetically pleasing.
Applied sealer grip additive
When selecting applied coating sealant, areas that are either exposed to the elements or standing water will require non-slip granules cast on the coating face for acceptable slip ratings.
IMPREGNATE SEALING ( Recommended )
- Water Based – Solvent Based – BIO Safe Technology
- Colour Enhancing System (Most Popular Choice)
- Water Repellent
- Protection from Salt Water
- Oil and Staining Repellent
TOP COAT PROTECTORS – UV Stable
- Water Based Acrylic (Fair Protection)
- Solvent Based Acrylic (Good Protection)
- 2 Part Polyurethane (Gloss and Satin)
- 2 Part Polyaspartic (Gloss, Quick Cure)
