Decorative Concrete Tools
When hiring a licensed professional for a project at your Orlando home, you want someone with experience and expertise. However, you also want a person who utilizes the right decorative concrete tools. That way, you know the job will get done correctly.
The type of decorative concrete tools depends on the project. For example, installing stamped concrete requires unique tools of the trade. Experts know the value of using superior-quality tools. For that reason, they choose carefully. Following are some examples of the types of tools used in the Decorative concrete industry.
- Float – A Bull or Wood float gets used to fill voids, level ridges, and smooth a concrete surface in preparation of using a trowel. A float is different from a trowel in that it does not require the installer to get close to the decorative concrete surface it is often used on long extended pole. Another purpose of using a float is to help push down coarse aggregate and bring paste to the surface to provide a better finish later.
- Trowel – For a smooth yet hard and dense surface, professionals use trowels after floating. Sometimes, professionals use machine trowels or power trowels, while other times, troweling gets done by hand. For the latter, the finishing expert will trowel the area often kneeling on wide wooden knee boards to prevent sinking in to the wet concrete. When necessary, the installer can attach a long handle to the trowel, perfect for finishing concrete without walking out onto the surface.
- Groover – A groover is also among the most important decorative concrete tools. Not only is this used for creating joints or grooves in the concrete, it also helps control the area where cracks might form when concrete contracts due to shrinkage or a change in temperature.
- Stamps – When having stamped concrete installed, patterned stamps, which look like oversized cookie cutters, get placed on top of freshly poured concrete. Available in virtually hundreds of distinct patterns, these create unique designs, such as cobblestone, wood, slate, brick, flagstone, and even fossils and leaves.
All of these tools can be useless in the hands of an inexperienced contractor. Stamped concrete can take many years to master and for the DIYer we always suggest starting with a small reasonable sized project to start before refining your skills on larger areas.