How to calculate the cost of edging polished concrete
What is the Real Cost of Edging on a Job?
What is the actual cost of prepping a 1000 square foot room? If you are removing a coating such as cut back carpet glue, VCT tile glue or epoxy, how long does it take with your existing equipment?
If you calculate your rate of removal at 100 square feet in 30 minutes then the natural assumption would be that it will take 300 minutes or 5 hrs to complete 1000 square feet. However, what many fail to properly calculate is the amount of time to complete the edging.
If you are working in an open 25 x 40 foot room you will have 130 feet of edging. If you can edge at a rate of 1 minute per foot, you have to add 130 minutes of time to your cost estimate. Actual labor time is 430 minutes or 7 hours. In this example edging represents approximately 30% of the cost of the job.
Now if the 1000 sq foot 25×40 area is made up of 5 10×10 rooms the cost of edging takes on a whole new meaning. A 10×10 room equals approximately 37’ of wall allowing for a 30 inch door. Five rooms x 37 feet per room equals 185 feet plus 35 additional feet for the 5 x 7 wall adjoining the open space for a total of 220 feet of edging. The balance of the walls in the open space represent an additional 60 feet for a total of 245 feet of edging.
245 minutes of edging = 4 hours plus 5 Hours for the field = 9 Hours for the job. Edging represents almost 45% of the labor!
If you are a one man operation, you will be spending almost half of your time on your knees! If you are a team, someone else (hopefully your employee or partner) is killing their back and knees! No matter how you cut it, edging is painful, slow, and frustrating but necessary.
If you are polishing a floor, the edging process is necessary for EVERY STEP translating into hours and hours of labor. Hand grinders produce a different scratch pattern than the planetary machines resulting in a need for blending, adding additional time. Depending on the facility, whether residential, commercial, industrial or institutional, edging can represent anywhere from 30% to 60% more labor on a job!
What many fail to realize is that technology is changing. With the advent of Octi-Disc technology, the same machine can be used to edge as well as to do the field, all in one step. No unwieldy devices that incorporate a hand grinder producing a different scratch pattern than a planetary. WerkMaster’s Octi-Disc technology allows the operator to edge standing up to within 1/8” or 3mm of the wall while reducing the overall labor time and cost of completing a room by up to 50% over today’s conventional systems