Rant: Hand trowel vs power trowel on a big slab in Denver

Tried hand troweling a 5000 sq ft warehouse floor last month. Took forever, knees hurt for a week. Rented a power trowel for the next one, finished in 2 hours with way fewer swirl marks. Anyone else fight the rental cost versus time tradeoff?

2 comments

2 Comments

ruby_patel271mo ago

Oh man, that brings back a story about my buddy Eric. He tried to hand trowel a 4000 foot slab in July heat in Phoenix and ended up with the worst case of concrete burn I've ever seen. His knees looked like ground beef for two weeks and he said the slab had those ugly swirls no matter how hard he tried. After that he swore off hand troweling for anything over 1000 feet. He rented a power trowel for his next job and told me it was night and day. The rental cost stung but he said saving 10 hours of back breaking work was totally worth it. Honestly I think the time savings alone pays for itself if you value your body at all.

patricialee1mo ago

Have you ever tried renting a power trowel with a walk-behind model? I did a 1500 foot garage floor last summer and after hearing stories like Eric's, I went straight to the rental place. The thing cost me about 180 bucks for the weekend but I finished in one Saturday morning with no knee pain and the finish came out smooth as glass. The trick is to get the blades just right before you start walking it across the wet concrete.