T

Answers

Poured terrazzo or terrazzo tile?

Poured gives you a floor with no joints in it at all, ground flat with the slab, and that is the whole of its argument. Tile gives you a floor you can lift and replace one piece at a time. On a renovation, poured is usually not available at all.
Six terrazzo processes, drawn to one scaleEach column shows the layers of one terrazzo process. Precast and cement-bound are thick; epoxy is thin; porcelain is a fired body. Dimensions are published ranges, not our measured figures.substratePrecast20 mmsubstrateCement-based12 mmsubstrateEpoxy5 mmsubstratePoured10 mmsubstrateLiquid3 mmsubstratePorcelain9 mmSections drawn to one scale from published ranges. Our measured figures are listed separately.
The six processes drawn to one scale. Layer thicknesses are published ranges.

The figures, and where each one comes from

Poured Tile
Seams none, if divider strips are used only as a pattern grout joints on every edge
Repair patch the hole, re-ground the whole area lift and replace the one tile
Install wet, then ground on site dry, set like any tile
Height 3 in on a sand cushion, or 1/2 in bonded the tile thickness only
Renovation ⛔ sand cushion cannot be added to a finished floor the usual answer
Seams and dirt nothing to catch in dirt collects in the joints over time

Why the processes are not interchangeable

The seamless argument is real and it is also the reason poured terrazzo is specified in lobbies and stations: a floor with no joints has nowhere for dirt to sit and nothing to crack along. But seamless is not the same as permanent, and the two claims get confused. A poured cement floor is ground together with its slab, so when it is damaged the repair is a patch and then a re-grinding of a much larger area, because you cannot grind a small patch flat against the surrounding finish. A tiled floor fails one tile at a time and the replacement is one tile. Over forty years on a floor that gets hit, that difference usually decides it — and it decides against seamless.

What these figures are, and what they are not

The build-ups and the sand-cushion renovation limitation are from the NTMA Terrazzo Systems Reference Guide and NTMA guidance. ⛔ The claims about repair scope and dirt are how the systems behave in use; they are not measurements, and we have not tested a floor we supplied. No cost figure appears on this page because we have not quoted one.

Measured data sheets and test reports

If you are specifying this

These are the forms we actually supply for this question, with production photographs where we have them:

Send a specification Ask for a sample