Concrete floors work well in businesses and homes because they’re as attractive as they are durable and resilient. Today’s concrete floors also offer a broad design versatility with an almost limitless array of stains and dyes. 

When you decide to stain, polish, or restore your concrete floors, you may have many questions. At ACT Restoration in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, our concrete floor polishing specialists believe in educating our clients and keeping them in the loop throughout the process. 

One term you may hear discussed when you’re getting ready to refinish your concrete floors is densifier.

Let our experts explain what concrete densifiers are, how they work, and how they help create a beautiful concrete floor that looks great for many years. 

What Are Concrete Densifiers?

To understand the need for concrete densifiers, you must first understand the structure of concrete. When concrete is poured, it has tiny natural pores on its surface. Its porous surface is permeable and soft, exposing it to damage over time. 

In its natural state, concrete can react to oxygen in the air, breaking down on a small scale until the damage eventually becomes significant. Densifiers fill those tiny pores, creating a chemical reaction throughout the concrete and increasing its surface density, hardening the floor's surface. 

Using chemistry, densify your concrete floors so they are less likely to become damaged and broken as time passes. 

Why Densifiers Are Necessary

Although polished concrete feels hard to walk on, the process of grinding, mixing, and smoothing concrete can create a naturally soft and porous surface. While the underlayment will still have its original strength, the polished surface becomes more vulnerable. 

As a natural part of the chemical reaction in concrete, your floor’s concrete surface is naturally soft and permeable. It will react to the oxygen connecting with its surface, which can cause it to break down. Without densifiers, floors can end up with dusting and susceptibility to damage. 

This porous quality can cause floors to wear down with heavy traffic and create dusting, which gradually erodes the surface of the concrete. It can also result in scratches and minor damage that builds up over time. When heavy equipment is dropped on the surface or compression occurs, the concrete is vulnerable to damage. 

Adding a densifier can significantly increase the strength and durability of the concrete surface. 

Concrete flooring with damage circled. 

How a Concrete Densifier Works

Put in the simplest terms, a concrete densifier is a type of chemical hardener that helps to protect concrete floors by making them more durable. They are used during the concrete polishing process. Densifiers help floors to last even longer while adding strength. 

Densifiers contain an active substituent or carrying agent, such as alkali or alkaline earth metal silicate. Examples of these are lithium, sodium, magnesium, or potassium silicate.

How Densifiers Protect Your Floors

Concrete densifiers are ideal for use on commercial concrete floors. These powerful liquid hardeners can be applied to any type of concrete surface, no matter which level of polish it holds. 

Here are just some of the ways you get added protection from densifiers.

Stain Resistance

Few things are less attractive than stains on concrete floors. With densifiers, your floor will resist all kinds of liquids and stains, which means they’ll look great even after heavy use. Your floors will look cleaner and more attractive even if they’ve seen their share of spills. 

Slip Resistance

Concrete can become slippery when it gets wet, so concrete densifiers help make concrete more slip-resistant. This will help prevent slip and fall accidents. 

Cost-Effective Solution

Concrete densifiers help concrete become an even more cost-effective solution to your flooring concerns. 

Moisture Resistance

Less porous floors are far more resistant to spills and moisture infiltration. If there is a spill in our work environment, it can be easily wiped up. This helps your workplace comply with safety regulations and creates a cleaner operation environment.

Reduced Wear & Tear

Even though your concrete floors are several inches thick, most of the wear and tear that happens to your floors occurs in a fraction of an inch at the very top. Densifiers protect this layer by hardening it.

Concrete floors that use densifiers will be slower to break down than more porous floors. Most of the damage to your concrete occurs on the surface, and with the help of densifiers, your concrete’s surface will be much harder and more durable. 

Less Dust

Without densifiers, concrete floors tend to break down. This is why unfinished concrete floors are often so dusty. With the application of densifiers, the top layer of a concrete floor becomes much less porous, which means far less dust in your facility.

Contact Our Concrete Flooring Specialists in MN

Based in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, ACT Restoration offers concrete polishing and restoration services for commercial and residential floors. Our professionals use a wet grind method for a more attractive and durable floor. 

Our services include densifying, patching, repair, topping, sealing, and staining. To learn more about concrete floor services for your business or home, call us at 612-750-5360 or contact us here. We’ll schedule a consultation to discuss your needs and establish a (free) quote on your concrete flooring project. 

Visit our project gallery to see what ACT Restoration can do for you!