Bob:
Good morning. This is Bob and Ryan with surface renew. And this morning we’ve got a rather different topic to talk about. We’d love to talk about terrazzo Little Rock AR and that’s kind of a broad term, Ryan, what all is involved in or what kind of different types of flooring I should say when you talk about terrazzo flooring, can you be looking at?
Ryan:
There’s several different types of terrazzo Little Rock AR? There’s a first of all, there is a, a poured floor, which is a poured in place like they do concrete. And then there is a tiled trousers that can be grouted, or it can be, it can have metal dividers in it. But the most common in our area is in the older buildings as and the newer buildings at the hospitals as a proxy to arousal this board.
Bob:
And we can go in and set up a restoration or a maintenance program for any of those kinds of floors. And the reason that’s so important is terrazzo floors are not cheap. We looked it up the average, this is kind of a national rough, but I mean, it’s, it’s going to be, you know, within a buck or two per square foot, wherever you’re located to razzle costs on average $32 a square foot to install not last forever, if properly maintained, but you are talking to a significant investment upfront for terrazzo flooring.
Ryan:
Even on the install part, it’s really technically not installed correctly. Whenever it’s installed around the, at the, in the big hospitals around area, not the name drop like the big Baptist hospitals, they it’s installed incorrectly. So after they pour it and it’s cured and the installation company thinks they’ve done a great job. The general contractor actually pays extra to have us come in, grind it and Polish it correctly. Instead of having a devil word wax on it, like they like to do wax is the devil on a poxy or on a terrazzo Little Rock AR floors. But another cool thing we run into isn’t a lot of these older buildings, they’re revamping from the early twenties all the way up into the fifties and sixties. They’re pulling up all these different types of flooring, whether it be VCT or carpet or whatever, and they find out they have a beautiful terrazzo Little Rock AR floor underneath it. That just needs to be restored.
Bob:
Yeah. It’s just kind of like a bonus for those people. A lot of you who are my age can relate to back in the eighties, when all that shade carpet got torn up out of homes and lo and behold underneath, it was some gorgeous, solid wood flooring that people want. It’s kind of the same thing going on in commercial buildings over time to Rouse got kind of dated and people wanted their place to look new and up to date. So they literally just put this laminate flooring over the top of this expensive, gorgeous terrazzo Little Rock AR. And it’s kind of a bonus when they pull it out. And so they call us then because the trousers a little beaten up, but that’s not a problem because we have restoration services to take care of that.
Ryan:
Yeah. And through our restoration services, what basically what travel is it’s either cement segmentations makes with an aura or a or a, a a poxy mix, but it’s basically broken pieces of marble mixed into concrete as an aggregate instead of having stone, like in Arkansas, we have granted and in limestone and river rock and pea gravel, we’re up North, it’s mainly limestone that they use as an aggregate. But with the aggregate in it is just marble chips and marble. And when we’re going in and fixing those, you got big breaks chunks, broken spots out, we’ll do a color color, match a poxy with broken pieces of matching marble in it. And then we grind it flat and smooth to get that passionate blended.
Bob:
And make that floor look great again, because nobody likes, there’s nothing worse, I think, than the impression somebody gets when you walk into a place and there’s like chunks of floor missing, it’s all scratched. It just looks dirty. Yeah.
Ryan:
Look dull. As dirty as people’s eyes, it’s not shiny, shiny equals clean and dull equals dirty.
Different Types of Terrazzo Little Rock AR
Bob:
Now we kind of got a little bit off topic there as we talked about some different types of terrazzo Little Rock AR, because Brian mentioned the word, the w word that we do not like in the restoration and maintenance business, and that’s a waxing. And the reason you’d like to avoid waxing is terrazzo like many other natural stones as just a beauty, just all in of itself without the waxing. And as we mentioned, time after time, waxing is a sacrificial coating. It is meant to be stained, destroyed, scratched, and that’s fine and good for the most part until it comes time to remove that wax because it’s gotten too thick. What are some of the problems you can run into when removing waxing from terrazzo?
Ryan:
It’s the chemical strippers that you use for the terrazzo Little Rock AR. They’re harsh and they’ll touch the stone part of it. Then it just makes the, it it and scratches it. I mean, it’s hard to get the wax off and the brushes you have to use and the different mechanical scrubbers and stripers, it’s just hard on it. And then you put the wax back down again, just to try to hide that and how the, all the flaws you made removing the wax. You put it back down again. And at that time you’re trapping hair, gunk, trash, just nastiness. You’re trapping it under the wax where if you Polish it, none of that’s there you’re polishing the natural look of the terrazzo.
Bob:
Yeah. Cause no matter how good and thorough a cleaning company is there, guys do not have time to make sure that every piece of hair, dirt, debris spills are cleaned up off that arousal. They’re under a time crunch that are out there putting waxed on and they’re spreading it and making your floor shine. The problem with that, like Ryan said, is they’re also just embedding all of those pieces of debris that re in your floor, which is, whereas we have no topical sealer put on there. So there is nothing to embed in the floor.
Ryan:
Yeah. We use a penetrating sealer on terrazzo Little Rock AR. And what, a lot of times you’ll pay a company to come in and, and rewatch your floor. And all they’ll do is come in and re burnish that existing wax, that heat it back up and just spread your old wax around. They’re not even stripping it exactly. Or they’re actually stealing from me in a way.
Bob:
And that works. I mean it, where we say we don’t like it because we think our process is much better, but waxing does work. It puts a shine on the floor, but it is so temporary as our big heartburn with using the wax. In addition to the fact that it’s damaging your floor, our process is a hundred percent natural.
Ryan:
And it’s a fake shine of face. You wax gives you a fake, false shine from a sacrificial coating that it‘s gonna look ugly in the times. You don’t need it to, whereas if it’s polished, it’s just polished like a rock collector, Polish stones. It’s the same thing as polished terrazzo Little Rock AR.
Bob:
And the great thing about terrazzo Little Rock AR when it’s naturally restored and maintained is the fact that maintenance on it is very simple. It’s typically just dust mopping every once in a while, a year and a half for traffic like commercial buildings. Yeah. They’re going to have to get a auto scrubber out of you’re really in a heavy traffic area, but actually our product is great with the auto scrubber because we can get you pads that will put the correct type of polisher on the bottom there and the correct cleaners where when you actually go to clean your terrazzo floor with your auto scrubber, it’s going to actually improve the shine and the protection of your floor without adding the sacrificial.
Ryan:
Coatings and the hospitals, instead of hospitals, where they figured out how they’re saving money, instead of paying somebody to a maintenance guy, that’s probably making minimum wage, doesn’t really care about the floors. He just wants to get his hours. He he’s not going to take the time to do the floor correctly, whereas we’ll come in, we’re going to be careful about it. We’re going to come in once a year and maintenance your floors like we do in the hospitals. And that will stay beautiful.
Bob:
Yeah. And that’s, without some guy running a buffer over that floor every night, which is what most places have to do. If you have wax and heavy traffic every night, somebody has got to be running a buffer over that floor in addition to cleaning the floor. And if, of course you don’t do both things. We just talked about how all that dirt and debris gets just embedded in the wax when you heat it up.
Ryan:
Yup. Yup. In the long run, you save money by having your travel done natural to instead of paying somebody to come in and maintenance it and relax it and all that, you just pay us once a year to come in and maintain it. Yep.
Bob:
So it’s a lot less inconvenient for your customers too. When you’re talking about a particularly a hospital, hospitals love us for that very reason, because that one time that we do have to come through, you know, we do, it is a little bit of a disruption for the hospital, but they’re only doing it one time instead of every single night, like you have to do with a waxed floor on a terrazzo Little Rock AR.
Ryan:
Yep. The another good point is just the, just the unmatched beauty of the terrazzo Little Rock AR is there’s no point in covering that up and it’s not easy to tear out. It’s a beautiful, beautiful floor that just needs to be restored.
Bob:
It’s a tough, durable coding that when properly maintained and if necessary restored will last you a lifetime,
Ryan:
It’s basically just a beautiful concrete is what it is.
Bob:
So we treat it much like a concrete $32, a square foot installed. You spent a lot of money on that floor and it should last you the life of the business. So we recommend giving us a call, having us come out, we offer free consultations. We’ll come take a look at your terrazzo Little Rock AR floor and get you a restoration, restoration and maintenance plan that meets your needs.