Beware of their quoting/pricing!!! Job: Grinding of 1400 sq ft garage floor that had high and low spots. When the estimate was given, we agreed on hitting the high spots over the entire floor and doing that in the 3-4 hr time frame. After that, we'd have a look and decide if more grinding was warranted. The estimator told us a 31" wide machine would be used. He also said "You know what your budget is, but I don't need to know that" a few times.
The next morning when the crew showed up they had a 16" machine. When I ask about it taking twice as much time, since it was half the size, they told me that the 31" grinder wouldn't work on this floor, and even if it did, they would not be able to get the truck into the area where the garage is. (It's a one acre lot with quite a bit of space in front of the detached garage; I've gotten a commercial box truck with a 20' box into the area).
So I left and let them get busy. I got a call in the early afternoon telling me that they are having trouble, and if I wanted them to just finish the day, or come back the next day for another 4-6 hours. They told me the concrete was very hard. My thoughts were to get them out of there, since they had already gone past the agreed upon time. I drove to the site and had a look. What I found is that about 1/2 the floor had been ground, and a lot had been ground off with many areas having deep gouges from the grinding. At that point I was in a position of having a floor partially ground with deep gouges of 1/8-3/16", or letting them continue to get the whole floor done. I told them to finish - since I didn't want a half finished job. In the end, they did the entire floor.
When the estimate was given I had a young man with me that heard the discussion and can verify what was said.
Bottom line is that we expected to have a cost of roughly $1000 (4 hrs at $250/hour). To finish the entire floor, since they had only completed part of it in 5-6 hrs, rather than hitting the high spots over the entire floor as agreed upon, it took them 13.5 hours. So I got a bill of $3375 instead of the expected $750-1000. They crew told me the concrete was the "hardest they had ever seen", not sure why that was, since the contractor used a standard bag mix.
Internet searches for 16" concrete grinders, 5 HP, are in the price range that I paid them to do one grinding job. Could have done the job myself...lol
Just BEWARE of their pricing strategy and get an estimate IN WRITING. They put us in a no win position, not listening to us and not doing what we agreed on. Having a partially ground floor is not a solution.
Note that they were prompt, courteous, and did get the job done, but at 300% of what we expected. read more
