Terrazo

[hawkaz]

I am working on a small tenant improvement project where they are adding interior non-bearing steel stud walls inside an existing building.

Now that the design is done, we have been notified that the existing floor is Terrazo. We were using shot pins to anchor the walls down- Does anyone have experience with Terazzo to know if this method is still valid?

 

[dik]

If the floor is terrazzo, then I would not use PAF's... Drilled inserts, perhaps...

Check with owner... holes in terrazzo are permanent...

 

[MikeHalloran]

If you mean hardened pins driven by gunpowder, yes, they will hold.

This was brought to my attention upon removing a nonbearing wall where the pins only penetrated 1/2" or so into the concrete. I tried using a wrecking bar to pull them out. Every damn one brought up a wide cone of concrete with it.

Later, I found that the only way to 'remove' them without damage is to slice them off with a Dremel tool and a rubber wheel, and polish the stub down flush.



Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[Michel60]

Good morning hawkaz,

There are a couple of different types of terrazzo. One is epoxy based and can be very thin (maybe 1/4"). If you have an older building it could be a "sand bed" terrazzo and could be an inch or two thick overall. For interior non-bearing partitions it's probably not of too much concern as long as your pins/attachment have sufficient length to embed past the terrazzo. You'll need to establish what type of terrazzo your dealing with and if your specified pins have sufficient length. For the thicker version of terrazzo you might also need to consider "blue-screws" in lieu of the typically shorter pins.

regards,
Michel

 

[MiketheEngineer]

If non-bearing - you might consider glue.... At least you don't wreck the floor and at some future date you could always peel it up and scrape it off??