Floor milling
Milling cuts into the floor you already have, to a controlled depth, without breaking it up. It is how you take a high spot off a slab that is otherwise sound, cut a channel for something that has to go in it, or remove a surface profile that nothing will stick to.
Cutting into the slab, not off the top of it
This is the part people get muddled, so it is worth saying plainly. Surface preparation removes what is stuck ON the floor — old adhesive, a coating, laitance — so the next layer bonds. Milling removes part of the floor ITSELF, to a depth you set, leaving a keyed profile behind. Different machines, different jobs, and on a lot of sites you want both: mill the high spots out, then prepare the surface for what is going down.
What we use it for
- Channels for underfloor heating pipe in an existing floor — see retrofit underfloor heating
- Channels for conduit, drainage and services where the slab has to stay
- Taking high spots off a slab that is out of tolerance but otherwise sound
- Removing a surface profile — tamp marks, brush finish, power-float polish — that will not take a bond
- Texturing for slip resistance on ramps and wet areas
- Cutting back to sound concrete where a top layer has failed
When milling is the wrong answer
If the slab is thin, weak, heavily reinforced near the surface, or full of services nobody can locate, milling it is a way of making a small problem into a large one. We survey and scan first. Sometimes the honest answer is a levelling compound, or a new floor, and we would rather say so before the machine comes off the wagon than after.
Milling is newer than our brochure, so the case studies elsewhere on this site are screeding and concrete jobs. Ask us on the phone about milling work — we would rather talk you through a real one than put a stock photograph here.
Questions we get asked
How deep can you go?
Controlled, and set by what the slab can take rather than by what the machine can do. On a sound floor a channel deep enough for underfloor heating pipe is routine. Taking a significant thickness off a structural slab is a different conversation and needs the structure looking at first.
Is it the same as grinding?
No. Grinding abrades the surface; milling cuts into it with teeth to a set depth. Grinding is for flattening and polishing a top surface, milling is for removing material or cutting a channel. Different tools for different jobs, and plenty of floors need both.
How much mess does it make?
It is dusty work by nature. We extract at the tool and sheet off, and on an occupied building it is worth agreeing which areas are done when. It is still far less disruptive than digging a floor out.
Can you mill around services?
We scan first. What is in a slab is rarely what the drawing says, and a heating pipe or a cable found by a milling head is an expensive afternoon. If the scan shows the floor is too congested, we will tell you.
Send a photograph and a rough depth
A picture of the floor, the age of the building, and what you are trying to get into or off it. That is usually enough for us to say whether milling is the right tool.
Or ring 01636 616388.
Related
Retrofitted Underfloor Heating
Think you cannot have underfloor heating because the floor is already down? You probably can.
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Surface Preparation
Nothing sticks to a dirty floor.
Read more
Floor Levelling
Most floor finishes fail because of what was underneath them, not because of the finish.
Read more