System · Quartz broadcast
Quartz broadcast, thickness where a coating would give up
Colored quartz aggregate broadcast into wet resin to refusal — usually two full broadcasts — then ground back and sealed. It carries impact and point loads a rolled coating cannot, holds traction when the floor is wet, and still reads as a finished architectural surface.
Quartz broadcast at a glance
- Best for
- Dealerships, kitchens, labs, high-traffic corridors
- Build
- Two broadcasts, ground back, sealed
- Thickness
- 1/8" – 1/4"
- Finish
- Textured, slip-resistant
What actually happens on site
Resin goes down, and kiln-fired colored quartz is broadcast into it until the surface will not absorb any more — that is what "to refusal" means, and it is a judgement made on the floor rather than a quantity read off a datasheet. The excess is swept and vacuumed back, the surface is ground flat, and the whole thing is repeated. Two broadcasts is the standard for a floor that will be worked on.
The result is a floor built mostly of aggregate with resin as the matrix holding it together, rather than a film of resin with a little grit in it. That inversion is the entire point: it is why the system takes a dropped tool without telegraphing the impact, and why it wears at the rate of quartz rather than at the rate of epoxy.
Where it belongs
Dealership service floors, commercial kitchens, laboratories, high-traffic corridors, and any bay where wet slip resistance and impact strength both matter and the floor is still on show. It is the specification when a floor has to survive the technicians and impress the customer looking at it from the lounge.
The 24,000 square foot service floor at the Bob Rohrman dealership in Gurnee was this system: ground to bare concrete, rebuilt with two full broadcasts, and finished in under a week around the shop's own schedule. Lift bases, drains and bay lines were detailed in place rather than laid to a standard grid.
Where it does not belong
It is more floor than a dry storage warehouse needs. If nothing is being dropped, dragged or spilled, the thickness is money spent on performance nobody will call on, and solid color epoxy does the job for materially less.
The texture is also real. A broadcast floor is deliberately not smooth, and while grinding back takes the sharpness out of it, this is not the surface for a space that will be dry-mopped or where a perfectly flat sheen is the design intent. Epoxy terrazzo or polished concrete is where that requirement goes.
Thickness, cure and return to service
A double broadcast typically builds 1/8 to 1/4 of an inch — an order of magnitude thicker than a rolled coating, and thick enough that the floor has structure of its own. Slip resistance is tuned by how far the surface is ground back and by the sealer chosen over it.
Because the system is built in passes with grinding between them, it wants more shutdown than a straight epoxy. Foot traffic generally returns the day after the seal coat, with vehicle traffic longer. Gurnee ran the whole 24,000 square feet inside a week, which is the realistic shape of the schedule on a floor this size.
The prep it demands
Mechanical profile to ICRI 310.2R, with the slab taken back to sound concrete — on a service floor that usually means grinding off years of oil-saturated coating rather than simply roughening what is there. Contaminated concrete is removed, not sealed over, because resin will not bond to oil no matter what is spread on top of it.
Cracks are routed and filled, spalls patched, and moisture verified to ASTM F2170 before any resin is opened. Then the layout work: lift bases, drains, trench covers and bay lines all get cut and detailed in place, because none of them are going to move to suit the floor.
What we bring to it
Our own resin means the matrix is matched to the aggregate and to the temperature on the day rather than to an average. Our own grinders mean the grind-back between broadcasts happens on our schedule, which on a two-broadcast floor is most of what decides the finish date.
And we place it ourselves. On a system this sequence-dependent, a subcontracted crew is where the wet edge stops moving and a cold joint ends up in the floor permanently.
Quartz broadcast in place
Who specifies it
Where quartz broadcast gets called for
Dealerships & service shops
The system behind the Bob Rohrman service floor: impact strength, traction and an architectural finish.
Aviation & hangars
Carries the point loads of jacks, stands and ground equipment where a rolled coating spreads them onto the slab.
Day, night and weekend shifts. Estimates are free. Covering Midwest, East Coast and Southern states — out of Chicagoland, with finished floors in Gurnee, Kenosha, Milwaukee and Chicago.
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Specifying quartz broadcast?
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