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Many contractors and builders who specialise in residential and commercial properties know all too well how important it is to have laitance removed. With a professional laitance removal service, your floor screeding process can be as thorough as possible, and you can avoid the hassle of floor covering that does not stick or bind to the screeding, causing problems over time.
Laitance removal involves sanding, and a laitance removal expert will extract dust particles and debris as safely as well as efficiently as possible so that you will have the perfect flooring. You can benefit from different methods of laitance removal, which include mechanical planning, scrabbling, shot blasting, abrading, and grinding, and the laitance removal service will advise you on the best technique or method to use in regard to the type of project you have, the depth and thickness of your liquid screed, and the kind of particles which have formed.
The removal of laitance is sometimes overlooked, but here are the top reasons why you should have Laitance removed.
What is Laitance
Laitance is produced or formed from a mix of cement, fine particles of concrete, and water, and it can sometimes be brought to the floor’s surface in the process of trowelling or placing. Once the concrete has cured, the mixture will often dry up, forming a thin layer or crust on the cement’s surface – and this is what is referred to as laitance.
Laitance can come in various thicknesses, and it can even reach thicknesses of up to 6 millimetres, which is extreme. The best way you can check or gauge the laitance’s thickness is to score the floor’s surface using a coin or other tool with a metallic edge such as a screwdriver until you can reach the primary aggregate in the laitance mixture.
The presence of laitance on the floor can have unwanted design and aesthetic consequences for your build or construction. Laitance build up seriously affects the levelling of the floor. This is why laitance removal should only be entrusted to seasoned professionals. These experts are adept at removing laitance and ensuring a smooth and aesthetic build and construction of the floor.
Why it needs to be removed by experts
There are indeed many reasons why laitance needs to be removed, especially by experts in laitance removal. One main reason is that laitance cannot properly stick or adhere to the aggregate, and because of its weakness, it can easily delaminate over a short period, especially if the area experiences a lot of foot traffic and heavy impact. Laitance can also easily erode due to traffic abrasion.
If you want your commercial or residential premises to be safe for everyone in them, you should make sure that the new flooring surface is properly and thoroughly bonded to the aggregate mass on the base where it is laid. The more traffic your flooring has, the more important it is to remove laitance, and this is even truer if your floor is subjected to a lot of changes or fluctuations in temperature.
Laitance can cause damaged flooring, and it can also lead to constantly dirty and dusty floors. Over time, if laitance is not removed, it can cause more severe damage to your floor’s surface. People spend and invest a lot of money and resources in creating good flooring. They use tiles, marble, wood and other expensive materials to ensure that the flooring is able to create a fantastic first impression. However, if you are not removing the laitance formation underneath, you can serious problems over time.
Different methods of laitance removal
As already mentioned, you can indeed take advantage of various methods of laitance removal, depending, of course, on the kind of flooring you have, its size, and other factors. However, some common methods of removal include acid etching, mechanical planing, abrading, grinding, grit blasting (dust-free), and scabbling.
It should be mentioned that these solutions or treatments are highly sensitive and require a thorough expert to execute. Even if you as an owner is aware of these solutions, an untrained flooring labourer would be unable to execute it the way you want them to. The person needs to be aware of the specific acid requirements, the degree and range of grinding that will be required and so on. Over use of the same might cause more damage that laitance itself. Too little use can lead to the accumulation overtime. Both ways, it will lead to problems and reworking in the near future.
Each method will have its merits, but you will have to choose the best method for the needs of the environment where laitance is to be removed, and this is where a laitance removal specialist can definitely give you the best advice and recommendations.
Conclusion
When people are building their dream homes, they want it to be build according to certain standards and requirements. However, rising costs can seriously push the budget. When things like these happen, people tend to cut down costs on some aspects of the build.
Laitance is something that is often overlooked even by people who want the best. They feel that this is an extra cost that can be compromised on. However, over some time they soon realise that they should not have skipped on this cost. We have often seen expensive flooring getting destroyed within a short span of time because of laitance formation. There are many instances that the marbles and other flooring materials coming lose because of laitance.
It is important that laitance is paid heed to in the initial stages of the construction. This can not only help maintain the nature of flooring for a very long time, but also ensure that you do not have to spend extra after making such a huge investment all over again. Laitance work requires the entire floor to be removed and then placed all over again. It is also a labour intensive and time-consuming process. If you are planning to do it, do it right at the first instance itself.
