The tools. The tools are key identifiers of what a hard-core concrete contractor must be. With the advent of DIY activities, anyone can feel like an expert. There’s a positive insight into this. However, the bad side is that professional contractors get little recognition for their masterpieces. Often, ordinary homeowners downplay a contractor’s role.
Today’s article aims to give back to the hardworking people and experts who hammered years of honing their skills. There is more to what these professionals do. Wouldn’t it be exciting to know what these guys got under their belts, literally? These experts got tools to master their trade. Get to know each of them as you read on!
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Contractor’s Essentials: The Tools Under their Belts
If you will pick out each essential tool and device from a professional artisan it will take you days/ To help sort out which are the essentials, this list got the guidance of experts from concrete contractor Cincinnati.
Take five essential categories where every apparatus belongs to.
1- Basic tool: Trowel
The main star of all concrete projects- remember the name, it’s the trowel. Suppose you got the trowel in your hand. All your flooring needs will be met. The trowel plays the main act of installing the concrete.
Experts of concrete contractor San Jose reveal that using and controlling the trowel is the key to a seamless, even, and polished-looking concrete flooring surface. That’s the trowel power. Without it, any contractor would agree that no job will come out perfect.
2- The Big Guns
Now jump into action from the bare tool and learn the guns essential to a hard-core concrete contractor. Under this category, you got:
- Groove cutters are often used for outdoor slabs found in the patios, driveways, and garages. These tools create the slab joints for concrete expansion that prevent cracks from appearing.
On the other hand, patios will use curved or rounded slab joints. Edgers are the more appropriate.
- Sprayers – concrete surfaces finish with curing compounds such as resin coatings to protect the surface. Resin is a fast curing agent. So, pouring it on the surface in a conventional way will only result in chaos. This is why you need a spray gun or sprayer. But do not undermine this tool. This is not your ordinary garden sprays.
The spray gun that carries curing compounds has a large bucket and is carried around by the flooring installer on its shoulder or back.
- Saws- for more minor projects, a flooring contractor uses concrete saws for creating slab joints on the surface.
- Plate Compactor- plate compactor, as the name suggests, is used to compact the concrete surface. That is the tool used to make a tight and compact concrete surface. You need a compactor to ensure no loose slabs or loosely installed concrete material on the floors.
- Concrete Settling Vibrators are an essential tool to prevent air pockets from forming while the concrete is being settled and poured. This also helps make a compact concrete finish.
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3- The Gears and the Get-up
A contractor’s get-up is essential not just to make a fashion statement in the manufacturing industry. It got a necessary function of why they have to gear up for work.
- Protective gear- a helmet or a hard hat is an original of construction workers. A contractor must wear protective headgear for massive spaces like buildings, large malls, hotels, and the like to prevent flying sparks or debris from hitting the person at work.
- Rubber Gloves- be specific when using rubber gloves used for flooring construction. Used ones that are puncture resistance such as nitrile gloves
- Rubber Boots- boots made for resurfacing concrete will have specialized features. These specified foot gears help the flooring contractor to go over and control the pouring compound on the flooring surfaces without messing up the flooring work. Also, when using epoxy coatings, a resin shoe is used.
- Eyewear/Goggles- you will often use this when using the bug guns for concrete work like the saw cutters and groover. Using them will make cement fragments and debris of the materials fly around, so better keep your eyes protected as you work.
4- Leveling Tools
Leveling tools are manually used or handled, usually with long handles that run a plate over the concrete surface. Here are everyday items for this process:
- Screeds – are straight tube boards used with hands to scrape over the wet contrite and level an entire slab all at once. Usually, a team or a duo of installers hold the tube from one end to another, and they synchronically move the tools as the top surface gets an even and straight finish. This item goes in different sizes according to how large or small the flooring area will be
- Floats are an essential tool with a long metal plate used to slightly brush over a damp curing concrete to let the liquid component rise and leave a smooth, dense concrete finish.
- Laser Level- back in the day, a string line was used to measure and set the level of the concrete’s elevation. Now the more effective tool to use for this is the laser level. This tool prevents slanted or elevated concrete in one end.
5- Specialty Tools
Lastly, you got specialty tools. These are enhanced essential tools. The added feature plays a crucial role for specific concrete conditions. For specialty tools, you got the key players of concrete resurfacing and repairs. These are:
- Walk-behind trowels – the difference between this with a regular trowel is its extended handle. A trowel is a shorthand, while walk-behind ones are explicitly used for a large flooring project
- Polisher and grinder- polishing has been becoming a most wanted finishing. Handheld grinders and polishers give a new or old concrete floor a new polished look.
- Power screeds- more powerful than regular screeds is the power screed for precision when achieving a tightly compact concrete