The six processes, what binds each one, and why the same word covers a 2 mm coating and a 30 mm panel.
30 questions in this harvest fall under this subject. 7 answered so far.
Terrazzo is a method, not a stone. Six processes share the name: precast panels pressed and cured, epoxy floors laid thin, cement-bound floors laid on site, poured terrazzo ground back to the slab, liquid terrazzo trowelled as a coating, and porcelain with a printed surface. Only the first five are terrazzo in the material sense: porcelain prints the look without being it.
Precast terrazzo is a panel made in a factory: aggregate and cement are mixed, pressed, cured under pressure, then ground and polished. It arrives as a finished panel of consistent thickness, which is why it is specified for large floors and for anything that has to pass a fire rating.
Epoxy terrazzo is aggregate in resin, laid in a thin layer — usually between 3 and 6 mm — either on site or as a factory panel. It is among the thinnest and the most chemical-resistant, and it is the one that cannot be repaired the way a cement floor can.
Both systems number their grades rather than quote millimetres, and both tie the grade to the thickness of the topping rather than to appearance alone. NTMA runs from number 0, which passes a one-eighth inch screen, up to number 5, which passes three quarters of an inch. The Chinese standard specifies 6 to 16 millimetres for a floor topping.
Yes, down to 8 millimetres, and the constraint that decides how thin is arithmetic rather than marketing: the largest chip may not exceed two thirds of the topping thickness. At 8 millimetres that caps the aggregate at about 5. What you trade is the depth of the wearing surface, not the material.
Yes, and the substrate is decided by weight rather than by the fixing. A bonded cement terrazzo wall system is 2-1/4 inches including the topping and runs 18 to 22 pounds per square foot, which is roughly 88 to 107 kg per square metre. That does not go on plasterboard. It goes on cement board or a heavy-duty backer board.
Whatever it spans, and the span is a structural question about the panel and its support rather than about terrazzo. What the standards give you is a maximum panel size — up to 3200 by 1800 millimetres with thicknesses to 60 — and a flatness tolerance on the finished element. What they do not give is a span table, and we do not publish one.
These are the phrasings people typed, not headings we invented. Where one has an answer the link is live; where it does not it is printed plain, and that is deliberate — a printed question with nothing behind it is an honest promise, and hiding it is not.
Ordered by how many questions each one holds.