# Terrazzo pricing



## kongcrete (Mar 6, 2008)

Anyone know an average price for terrazzo install? I know there are factors just like with everything else, but Im just trying to get an average price per sq ft for an average terrazzo job.


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## Double-A (Jul 3, 2006)

If you're a contractor, welcome to the forums and why not post an introduction and let us get to know you?

If you're a homeowner, DIYChatroom.com is the place to post this question.

Putting your location in your profile will help others know if they are close to you or not. Also, telling us a bit more about your trade, other than "concrete" will help us understand how to relate to you and your question better. In other words, do you do finishing, form work, manufacture CBUs or fit folks for concrete shoes?

I'd imagine prices are going to vary, even for an "average terrazzo job", depending on region, availability, etc. Help us help you out here.


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## kongcrete (Mar 6, 2008)

We are out of Phoenix, Az. We are a concrete contractor specializing in decorative work ie: stamped concrete, staining, concrete grinding/polishing, overlayments and concrete countertops. We still do a lot of regular flatwork as well (broom finish, exposed aggregate, rock salt..etc)

We recently got into concrete polishing (2 years ago). 
I have been installing stamped concrete for 12 years, micro-toppings 10 years, concrete countertops 12 years (first one was back in 1995)
and regular flat work for about 15 years.

I want to add terrazzo installations to our line up. I will have a crew trained before any installations but for now Im just trying to get an idea of what companies are getting per sq ft. I know just as well as everyone else that there are a ton of things that factor in for price, but Im just trying to get a basic idea.

Ive heard as low as $8 per sq ft and as high as over $40 per sq ft. 
When I say average job Im thinking of either a polyacrylate or an epoxy thin set terrazzo installed on good concrete with no custom divider strip layout and without multiple colors...just a basic terrazzo job with #1 or #2 sized chips. 
Any ideas on pricing??


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## Double-A (Jul 3, 2006)

Not even a foggy idea of pricing.

We do residential. Not much call for it through us yet (well, zero actually).

Welcome to the forums! You should fit in nicely.:w00t:

Hopefully someone around here knows more about it than I do.


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## Taranis (Feb 23, 2007)

Kongcrete,
Don't start with epoxy terrazzo. This is a specialised material that requires more than training on the grinding. Your guys need to know how to use resins and their pitfalls. It takes a lot of experience. Working with concrete is a whole diferent ball game to resin flooring. 

With epoxy there is no average job. Conditions will determine what prep you need to do, and I'm not just talking about the weather.
Dry grind or wet grind. Sometimes you need to do both.
Our prices range from £57 to £200 per m2. This shows the difference in contracts.

What I would say is to get hold of an experienced resin floorlayer. He may not have laid terrazzo but his knowledge of resins is more important. Even if you get him for 6 months this should be enough to train your own guys to work with the material for this specific type of work. When you are ginding/polishing you will use a different range of diamonds. Trial and error will determine wich ones are best.
Get a resin manufacturer on board. They will give you support with the technical side of things as well as (if you show you will make it worth their while) training your guys on the material. They may even provide you with sufficient material to practice on if you have the space.
Only then, when you know how much the diamonds, material, labour, grinding machines, prepwork, and all the other things you need to carry out the work + profit you will know how much you want to charge. 
How much you want to charge and how much the customer wants to pay will determine if it's worthwhile. You may make more than you thought or you may not see it's worthwhile.
There is a lot to go through but at the end you'll be going towards being a specialist and for me that has been worth my while.


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## Bill_Vincent (Apr 6, 2005)

In American terms, :laughing: Starting price would be around 18-20.00 a foot. Taranis is right about the epoxies, though, or ANY of the resin terrazzos. it's a completely different animal. To start with they only get poured about a 1/4" thick (for Taranis' sake, that's about 6 mm), so there's no room AT ALL for error. For thinset terrazzos, the best bet to start with would be acrylic. It gets poured 1/2" thick, and can be poured over concrete (no need for a mud bed). The only thing difficult about grinding that stuff is the boredom, and trying to stay alert so you don't grind your way to China!! :laughing:


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## kongcrete (Mar 6, 2008)

Taranis, I have installed some resinous flooring in my time and I know of some other guys with more experience in that feild than me as well. It does take some real know how.
I use Substrate Technology for most of my tooling for concrete grinding/polishing and they are very knoweldgable in terrazzo as well I just havent really talked with them about it yet. But they have told me before that they would fly out their terrazzo specialist for help whenever we need it. Having a supplier like that comes in real handy.

Bill, I know exactly what you mean as far as boredom when grinding....it is VERY boring. The only part that takes any real thinking is figuring out which abrasives are going to work best for the concrete you are working on.

Thanks for the replies!


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## Bill_Vincent (Apr 6, 2005)

I did alot of epoxy years ago. Seems like Connecticut's the place to be for pharmaceutical labs-- Pfizer, Miles, Boeringer-Ingleheim, Bristol Meyers-- and all of them needed nonstatic chemical resisitant flooring, and epoxy terrazzo fit the bill perfectly. Same with alot of the hospitals around the state.


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## Taranis (Feb 23, 2007)

Bill,
we lay at 8/9 mm and grind down to 6. I'm old enough to know the inches part but I'm sometimes useless at the conversion. Mental Block!!
For the most part we use epoxy for terrazzo cause it's easier to work with and colour range is better. 

The thing to remember Koncrete is you are only grinding off 2/3 millimetres (1/8"). It is very easy to go down too far. Unlike concrete when you may have to take off 1/4" (revert to imperial measurement) to make sure it's flat. For resins you may need to do this before installing the resin to take out high spots and reduce the likelyhood of grinding through to the subfloor.

We recently bought a new fancy grinding machine. HTC 950. It's remote control with 4 heads - makes it more stable - and is superb. The guy operating the machine doesn't need to touch it. It means the boring part of pushing the thing about is out as well as extending the working day of the machine. He can feasibly go for a walk and talk to the rest of the squad whilst operating it.
Costs plenty though.
It is great just being able to see the machine in operation. :clap:

I would reiterate that it's the knowledge of resins you need to get right.
Something goes wrong with the installation then it will cost you a lot of money and time. Something goes wrong with the grinding, it's relatively easy to fix.

We have done these terrazzos in supermarkets recently. good for refurbishments where thickness/weight is an issue.


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## Bill_Vincent (Apr 6, 2005)

We poured 1/4" and ground down to 1/8". We had two machines we used-- both were 220 3 phase machines, and for epoxy both were used dry, and would be hooked up to a 55 gallon drum vacumn. The rough machine had diamond plates, but the fine/ finish machine used carborundum stones, and normally we'd only take it down to 120 grit, because any finer and the floor would be a lawsuit waiting to happen!


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## Taranis (Feb 23, 2007)

I know what you mean by that.

For finishing we go up to 200 grit resin bonded discs. For the most recent jobs we have had to wet polish the floor as we were polishing the marble into the resin if you know what I mean.
It was dark, we had 3,500 sq. yds to do and could see there was a problem with it looking dirty. Usual building site conditions - atrocious. When the main lights went on we could see what the problem was, so we wet polished the whole floor in 3 days. Couldn't have been done if we didn't have that machine.
Ours is a 415v 3 phase attached to a 3 phase vaccum fed through a collector.
On the next terrazzo job I'll take a video of it and post it here. We are due to start work beginning of April.


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## Bill_Vincent (Apr 6, 2005)

Looking forward to that!


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## JBBS (Jan 17, 2008)

We use a troweled on epoxy terrazzo. Prices range between $15-20 sq ft depending on colors (solid, border, ect.)


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## Taranis (Feb 23, 2007)

Is that a quartz system, JJBS?


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## JBBS (Jan 17, 2008)

100% solid epoxy and natural marble compound


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## Taranis (Feb 23, 2007)

do you do coving too?


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## JBBS (Jan 17, 2008)

Apparently I do not have enough posts to PM. Here is the product we use. hitechflooring.com/company_overview.shtml


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## Taranis (Feb 23, 2007)

Yes, that's the same as one of our floors. Over here we call it a quartz system.
I would be worried about putting it over sheet vinyl though.
If I proposed that over here I'd be put up against a wall and shot.


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## JBBS (Jan 17, 2008)

I agree with you 100%. It is a great product, but only as great as the product below it! How many posts do I need to PM again?


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## Taranis (Feb 23, 2007)

Not sure about that.
Time for me to go home. End of my day.
I'll try to post some images of the finishes we have for epoxy. 
Do that tomorrow.


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## kongcrete (Mar 6, 2008)

Taranis that HTC 950 is a pretty cool machine. I really dont like the four heads though. I have an HTC 800 three head and it works so much better in my opinion for uneven concrete floors. 
With terrazzo I dont know if four heads would be better, but in my experience the standard three headed planetaries work better on concrete. 

Have you seen the new Lavina 32" grinder? It has six heads. You can take three off when you need to do some heavy grinding and add the other three when you go to polishing and get moving a little faster.

To be honost my favoirte machine is the Substrate Technology PrepMaster 3030. I actually like using that machine better than my HTC for grinding as well as polishing. People say you cant polish with a PrepMaster or a Terrco, but I havent come accross a concrete floor that I could not polish with my PrepMaster 3030. It all comes down to determining which abrasives to use on each floor.

Terrazzo really interests me. Ill be sure to let you guys know how my first install comes out (good or bad):thumbup:


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## Double-A (Jul 3, 2006)

JBBS said:


> I agree with you 100%. It is a great product, but only as great as the product below it! How many posts do I need to PM again?


I believe that magic number is 20. You're getting closer.


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## Taranis (Feb 23, 2007)

It needs the 4 heads to make it stable enough to be remotely controlled. No side to side movement at all. And you can get very close to the edges cos you can walk round to the front of the machine while still controlling it.
I have used the Terrco but didn't fancy it although the Terrco flexi is good with coves. That's why I was asking the question, what is the best machine for coves that also has dust extraction?
I'm looking to buy something soon and need to know all the options.
I have thought about getting into polishing concrete but there is not as much call for it here as there is in the States.


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## kongcrete (Mar 6, 2008)

Taranis said:


> It needs the 4 heads to make it stable enough to be remotely controlled. No side to side movement at all. And you can get very close to the edges cos you can walk round to the front of the machine while still controlling it.
> I have used the Terrco but didn't fancy it although the Terrco flexi is good with coves. That's why I was asking the question, what is the best machine for coves that also has dust extraction?
> I'm looking to buy something soon and need to know all the options.
> I have thought about getting into polishing concrete but there is not as much call for it here as there is in the States.


Have you seen the HTC 1500 or the 2500 yet? They had that beast of a machine (2500) at the World Of Concrete this year. Costs $500,000. I guess they have sold 4 of them so far


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## Taranis (Feb 23, 2007)

I have seen it.
Who would'nt want to be the operator for that machine.
I toyed with buying it for 2 minutes when I went for the 950 but reality set in. Need loads of area to justify having it.
Couldn't use it on epoxy though, there would be none left having gone over it with that monster.


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## Taranis (Feb 23, 2007)

Here are some images of our resins.
1st image is Pebblestone (epoxy). We also made a small breakfast bar for them in the same resin.
Lots of colours.
2nd image Polyurethane self levelling resin. Very strong and resistant.
3rd. is mosaic epoxy
I can't seem to get the text in between the pictures. Will do more.


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## Taranis (Feb 23, 2007)

These are;
Entrance to a nightclub.
Epoxy SL (available in any colour you like). We also did a little girl's bedroom in pink which looked fabulous.
Quartz resin on a factory floor.
Hope you like.:thumbup:


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## Bill_Vincent (Apr 6, 2005)

That first pic looks like something we have over here called "Chattahoochie". Nice stuff-- only problem is it was meant for exterior applications, the biggest use was pool decks and walkways down south, and I've seen more installations that failed than survived. 

This first one was done by my father's crew when I was a kid. It's the exposed aggregate deck around our pool:










(obviously not taken for the deck-- that was the first tile I helped put in when I was 10)

The rest of these are mine, all epoxy terrazzo:


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## Taranis (Feb 23, 2007)

Very good work.
Like the jewellers. Good how the walkway has been centred on the "M".

Kon, you sound as though you know a lot about grinding/polishing. If you get hold of a resin man you would probably do well.


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## Bill_Vincent (Apr 6, 2005)

Ever hear of a place in NYC called the Metropolitan Museum of Art? I did two of their retail stores. For those on this side of the pond, one at Stamford Town Center in Stamford, Ct., and this one in Farmington, Ct., at Westfarms Mall.


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## kongcrete (Mar 6, 2008)

Nice pictures guys! I like seeing other guys work that take pride in what they do.
Bill do you still install terrazzo flooring? 

Taranis...ya I dont think HTC had terrazzo flooring in mind when they designed that 2500 machine


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## Bill_Vincent (Apr 6, 2005)

Unfortunately, no. My family's business went under in 1990, mainly because of the recession, and when it did, I didn't have the grinding machines any more, so I haven't poured any since then. but it's like riding a bike-- you never forget!!


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## fine-lyfinished (Sep 18, 2008)

hey, how much i concrete polising running out there per sq/ft? also what is micro coating?


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## Bud Cline (Feb 12, 2006)

fine-lyfinished,

Hi, A Chevy Lumina iz bout 20 thousand whereas a Chrysler 300 can be had for around 34 thousand. OK? 10-4 over!


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