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Hello,

does anyone have information on polished concrete for flooring and concrete slabs for countertops. I have seen a lot of publicity in US sites about concrete slabs for counters - they come in many shapes, colours and finishes. I am eager to find out how easily they are available, what the cost could run to.

For flooring, i see the big warehouses have these concrete floors and they finish them up really smooth, some places even have colours added. I feel this could be a great alternative, with a good look for floors.

Please advice.
Thanks

I read about it online. It seems you have to polish the floor multiple times - successively with finer grind bits, to get a good finish and it turns out to be very expensive (the repeated polishing, I mean)

thanks aries. How do the concrete countertop prices compare with granite or other stone.

I spoke to a company in Hyderabad a couple of years ago. I was told that they would need to transport heavy machinery and hence it would be cost prohibitive for individual homes. I do not remember the name of the company. There is one company in gurgoan Haryana, http://polishedconcrete.in/solutions/residential-floors/polished-concrete.html that talks about polished concrete floors for residence, It may be worth a call

thanks Tvsh, will check them out. THere were a few things that I wanted to use in my house -
1. Polished concrete floor and counter tops.
2. tiles with solar panels built in
3. rain water harvesting - good enough to drink.
4. ready wall panels (which makes home construction so fast, that we can finish a house within 4 months to interiors complete).

but somehow, I could not get all the details and right contact. I thought I would throw it out here, so people who start construction now could try it out.

I am using Rainwater harvesting in mysore ( there is no mandatory requirement in Mysore) for drinking water. After first flush, collected water is free from most impurities. however there are fine micro particles that do pass through the filter and get collected at the bottom of the tank. I cleaned the tank after a year. I use the water after RO filter. I am using pop-up filter for filtering rain water.

There is an australian company that has a technology called Rapidwall. According to them, this should reduce the cost of construction by 30% and make the construction quick. http://www.rapidwall.com.au/index.php?o ... Itemid=195

RCF ( rasthriya chemicals and fertilizers have tied up with Australia to bring this technology to India. I tried in vain to locate an agent of RCF in mysore who can assist in using this technology. None of the engineers or architects, I spoke to had even heard of this company and I gave up.

One thing you should be careful in using ready made panels such as drywalls is the amount of moisture in Indian homes, due to wiping of the floors, unlike in the west, where there is only vaccuming of carpets.

thanks tvsh. I did check Rapidwall and was hoping someone in Bengaluru was trained with it. There was nobody. I kept following up with the collaboration in Tamil Nadu, they were nice enough to send me all the details, but there were no trained builders/architect who would go with it. I hope in the future there would be more use of these.

Yes, the drywall is not suitable for India, but these Rapidwall structures are slightly different, they are made with cement / some by products from chemical fertilizer factories. I checked their samples - really nice homes built almost 20 years back and still looking good. They have been tested for earthquakes, wind and moisture. The advantage with these is that they are quick, reasonably less expensive and look good.

Hopefully we will advance to western standards where we provide our builders/masons better tools and safety equipment. And also provide lower nuisance to our neighbors during construction. They have started to some extent, but it needs to improve a lot more.

Hi

I did seriously evaluate Rapidwall tech but none of the architects or builders I spoke to know of this . There is a company in Udupi http://www.hastha.in . You can speak to them. They seem to be promoting rapidwall construction

Please read the following articles:

http://vijaykarnataka.indiatimes.com/articleshow/11640824.cms
http://www.hastha.in/img/udayavani.jpg
http://www.daijiworld.com/news/news_disp.asp?n_id=116231

Taranga (Kannada weekly magazine) also had an article on RapidWall , I have cut the article pages (but no online link)

You can get news and updates about construction news from http://www.epcworld.in , they are constantly into researching and updating news about construction.

Isn't this polished concrete similar to the good old mosaic tiles. Mosaic tiles are also made of cement with some granules embedded in them and then multiple polishes are done on top of that. I have also come across "in situ" mosaic where the whole floor is cast with mosaic on the site itself, so no joins are visible and very similar to this concrete flooring. But I guess we do not have labor for these things now a days. If we get good labor for oxide flooring (reg, green etc.) I feel they still look very good and would love to go for those in some places of our house.

In general, most engineers and architects now a days are not capable of doing something different. They do not have the right contacts nor the will to do so. I asked my contractor if he knows about rat-trap wall construction, and he had not even heard of it. He said if you are ok, I will try it in your site for the first time. I obviously do not have the guts to be the scape goat for the only house I probably will be building. So, ultimately we endup going the routine way and sacrifice a lot of dreams that we had about non-conventional construction ideas.