As Rick recently mentioned in a post about “Cimex options”, I did just complete a marble job with my Cimex 48DF. The job turned out well and the customer was very happy with the work, or should I say the guy that’s building the house for the customer was very happy with the work.
This house is almost completed, it has taken them about 15 months to get were they are and the house, un-furnished, is worth about $5.5 Million. Yup, you guessed it, no the home owner isn’t in the floor care business.
The way I got involved with this project is that one of the trades that were working in the house got over spray on about 700 feet of the 2000 feet of marble on the first floor. Although there wasn’t any color to the over spray, the floor was badly etched. We diamond ground the damaged area and powder polished the rest. To do the actual job it took about 39 man hours over two days. We went back a third day to correct some thing that happened in the last area we did as we were working out the door and by doing this it gave us some time to play with the floor a little bit and correct some installation problems. It also had another benefit that I’ll get into in a minute. Let me help you guys that are running the numbers through your heads right now. $7,180 divided by 39 man hrs comes out to about $184 per man hr. Keep in mind a few things, (1) the helper I had on this job had never been on a marble job before, (2) when it comes to prep work, I’m as anal as they come, we wrapped every thing and any thing in blue painters tape & plastic 24 inches high. This was for two reasons, first, I don’t want to ruin any thing in a $5 ½ Million home and second, when you go to that much effort for your prep work the customer can see your conscientious and they wont go behind you and pick your job apart.All that prep work took more than 7 hours.
On this job I only used four different grits of diamonds (220, 400, 800, & 1800). Four grits at about $1.15 each, for 700 feet and $2.00 per foot for powder polishing.
The other benefit of going back that third day, was I asked another contractor, George, to come and take a look at the Cimex 48DF that I’d been telling him about. The area that we ground that third day was about 250 sq ft. He has been in the marble industry for about 30 years and is very knowledgable. For him to grind 250 ft with his equipment it would take him about an hour per grit. For him to do it with my Cimex, it took him literally 10 minutes to do the same thing, we actually timed him with a stop watch. Of course there was one difference, according to this 49 year old gentlemen, there is a HUGE difference in operator fatigue. (To make him feel better I told him that after I’ve been running the Cimex all day the palms of my hands do get a little red.) Something else he liked was the consistency of the grind or “Scratch Pattern”. I told him about this board and he said he might post his opinion of how the machine worked.
I hope this answered some questions about using the Cimex for more than just carpets. If you guys have any questions about this job or any thing else that I can help with feel free to ask.

David Gelinas

What's the difference with that machine then my Cimex for the carpets?

That part of the trade sounds interesting but I think I'd be too scared to do marble floors!

Rich Gallina
Countryside Carpet Cleaning

I envy you David......I know marble is a great money maker.....I've been intimidated into not offering it,due to all the caveats involved.
We do tile and grout,another cash cow.
I would love to add marble to our offerings.
If I'm ever down your way,could you use a helper/student for a few days....?

Second that Mike. Maybe we can go down together if it's OK with David and you of course. I just picked a commercial account but they have 3 building and lots of relestate in Orange County.

Rich Gallina
Countryside Carpet Cleaning

Dave is off with his wife through the weekend celebrating their anniversary. (He had to go spend some of that money) So he won't be able to reply to this thread till next week.