Cut Out Your Niche With A Concrete Saw

In the recent past concrete cutting focused strictly on the high-end commercial market; the more concrete you cut, the more you made. But now Pat O’Brien, executive director, Concrete Sawing and Drilling Association, St. Petersburg, Florida, says there has been a definite shift to making money cutting concrete in the residential sector. “More and more of our commercial concrete cutting professionals are expanding into residential,” he says.

THE DECORATIVE FACTOR

One reason causing the shift, O’Brien says, is the popularity surge in decorative concrete. “This whole decorative concrete trend is changing the concrete industry,” he says. “It is not going away; it is growing.”

But decorative concrete isn’t limited to residential applications. Howard Rostad, Five Star Concrete Services, Phoenix, Arizona, has been doing commercial decorative concrete sawing and coating for years.

To cut concrete for decorative purposes, you have to have the right tools. Generally speaking, the right tools are usually angle grinders, handheld circle saws, and walk-behind concrete cutting saws. While larger blades offer better control, small angle grinders do a better job on curving cuts. The best blades for decorative cutting give you a crisp edge on both sides of the cut. Decorative cuts are typically 1/16 to 1/4 inch deep and usually 1/8 inch or less wide and are usually made into green concrete.

Continuous rim blades designed for tile cutting get you the crisp edge you want in decorative work but cut slower than other saws. The turbo blades also create a clean cut and they work for both green and cured concrete. The turbo blade has a narrower slot width (1/16 inch) and uses both segmented and continuous rim technology. The turbo blade is great for decorative shallow cutting.

Many contractors also use crack-chasing bits for decorative cutting. Crack-chasing bits were originally developed to route cracks in concrete for repairs with sealants and repair mortars. But with the 45-degree wedge shape it produces, these bits make decorative V-shaped chamfered joints possible.

While these typical saws are now being used in decorative work, the decorative industry is also marketing special saw systems made just for intricate decorative cutting. Engrave-A-Crete, Bradenton, Florida, manufactures equipment for cutting circles and curves. They have templates, as well as and hand-held and walk-behind engraver machines, and colors and stains.

Soft-Cut International, Corona, California, also has a system for cutting decorative joints and control cuts. They have a range of gas-powered walk-behind, early entry blades. Saws are lightweight so you can cut green concrete in either radius or V-shaped chamfered patterned cuts.

CUTTING OUT EGRESS WINDOWS

Another trend luring contractors into residential projects is cutting egress windows, says O’Brien. If you are lucky enough to be in an area where basements are the norm then expanding into cutting egresses ought to be easy, he says. Ron Dailey, True-line Coring and Cutting, Nashville, Tennessee, agrees. While he has cut egress windows in Tennessee, he says they are actually more popular in Missouri, Iowa, and Kansas, or other tornado areas. “When there is a tornado, where would you want to go—the basement,” he says. “Everyone has a basement in the Midwest.”

The best saws to buy for cutting egress windows according to Dailey are good hydraulic chain or hydraulic ring saws. “Most of the time when you are cutting an egress window, you need something with power and depth to cut through at least 8-inches of reinforced concrete,” says Daily. “You don’t want to have to waste time cutting on both sides of the wall.”

While the ring saw will cut the depth, it may not have the power you need, Dailey adds. “But even then the power you need really depends on the type of aggregate you are cutting. Some concrete is harder than others.”

Blade manufacturers consider concrete with a compressive strength of 3000 psi or lower a soft material and concrete with a strength above 6000 psi a hard material. So, you should use a blade with a hard bond to cut the lower-strength concrete and a blade with a soft bond to cut high-psi concrete. Similarly, hard aggregate (such as trap rock, basalt, and quartz) dulls diamond particles fast, so use a blade with a softer bond to allow new diamonds to be exposed as needed.

Once you know what you are cutting and what you need, Dailey says you can buy a good chain saw or ring saw for most hard concrete for under $5,000. “The thing to remember is that the diamond cost will be higher if you choose to buy a chain saw,” he says.

MANAGING THE COSTS

One of the biggest issues with getting into concrete sawing is the cost of tool maintenance. “The average contractor spends 40% of his total spending for tools on administrating the tools,” says Nick Townsend, Fleet Management Program advisor, Hilti North America, Tulsa, Oklahoma. “Most of the time a fleet of tools is like a black hole you throw money into.”

Tool administration is downtime when a tool breaks down and includes the cost to repair or buy a replacement tool. It includes the time spent making the decision to repair or replace and the time paying the bills and sending the invoices. All that “administration” takes time and money and is 100-percent unpredictable.

That is why structural repair contractor Luke Secrest, The Basement Guys, Reynoldsburg, Ohio, decided to sign up for Hilti’s Fleet Management program. He says it works especially well for concrete saws because with the demanding work it takes a lot to maintain them.

The program is a leasing program in which Hilti does all the tool administration and maintenance for you for a monthly fee. The company does all the repairs and replacements when you need them. Even though Secrest still calls a concrete cutting subcontractor to do the big jobs, the program has relieved the frustration of discovering the saw is broken when he needs it most. “It is like working with a brand new set of tools all the time,” Secrest says. A program like this one may be the way to go when you decide to do more concrete cutting in your business.

Whether you are cutting out egress windows, doing decorative scoring, or slicing out a control joint, remember to buy the right saw for the job and cut out a money-making niche for yourself.