Bad concrete floor jobs at Walmart

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cjd
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Bad concrete floor jobs at Walmart

Post by cjd »

I shopped at Walmart last night for the first time with a cart since they remodeled last year. I've noticed and heard about the messed up concrete with old tile lines and imperfections. I probably had a crappy cart to start with, but I noticed I could almost feel the depressions in the concrete, almost like driving on a bad pavement. The cart was dipping and vibrating as it went across the floor. Not the nice smooth feel of a vinyl tile floor. A few times I looked down and saw where it looked like part of the concrete had chipped away when they removed the tile. Also around the coolers and freezers it looks rather unfinished and dirty.

I haven't personally been to many other stores converted to concrete floors, other than when Goodwill moved into the old Office Max. And I've seen it in a Winn DIxie remodel. But this job looked worse than those to me.

The uneven color I already thought looked bad but the poor surfacing just looks and feels cheap. I think if they're going to do this they need to put a new layer on top of the existing concrete to smooth it out. Or maybe add a color to it, such as brown like they did in their new builds. It would be messy though and take too long to be ready for traffic.
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Re: Bad concrete floor jobs at Walmart

Post by Alpha8472 »

This is nothing new. Target experimented with concrete conversions recently. The result was cracked and uneven concrete. The store eventually put in new white tile as the floor was in terrible condition. The conversion to concrete trend was hailed as environmentally friendly over 10 years ago as concrete floors do not require harsh chemicals and waxing.

The reality was that the floors were ugly and looked worse than a discount warehouse supermarket.

The trend now is laminate wood flooring or tiles with a faux wood look. Rite Aid has the faux wood tile, and Target is using laminate wood flooring instead of carpet on new remodels.
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Re: Bad concrete floor jobs at Walmart

Post by pseudo3d »

The Walmart near me is all concrete floors now. It was expanded once in the mid-1990s, with tile and normal ceiling tiles, then expanded to a Supercenter in 2010, adding a new section with concrete floors and warehouse ceilings, but replacing the tiles and ceiling in the old store, then a few years ago, they ripped up all the 2010 tile to put in concrete. Interestingly, I can't actually tell for sure where the 1988 and 1995 stores start and stop, as opposed to the local At Home, which has an obvious divide between where the old Gander Mountain was and the new expansion they built (the floor slopes slightly).
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Re: Bad concrete floor jobs at Walmart

Post by Alpha8472 »

Walmart is introducing new floor cleaning robots to replace janitors. They prefer a uniform concrete floor to work best. The tiles need harsh chemicals and waxing, but the concrete only needs mopping. Of course, getting rid of tile would save money and be easier on the robot. The robot cannot tell where the tile ends and concrete begins.
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Re: Bad concrete floor jobs at Walmart

Post by Super S »

The concrete floors look bad period. Just look at the Fred Meyer of your choice in the Pacific Northwest for examples. Most of the remodels leave the floors looking much worse, exposing bad patch jobs, old tile marks, and areas where the floor was cut open for previous work.

As for the chemicals, wax, etc... SOMETHING is applied to the floors to give it a shiny coat, and probably needs periodic reapplication as it wears. I don't see the real benefit here. I have seen aging concrete floors which have lost their shine though.
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Re: Bad concrete floor jobs at Walmart

Post by storewanderer »

When the Wal Mart near me lost its white tile floor a year or two ago, I actually was in the store one night when they were removing the floor from a big part of grocery. They had a machine and it just literally broke the floor and lifted it right up. The replacement cement floor in this store is actually smooth and looks about as good as a cement floor can look. You can still see glue marks from old tiles, but there are few, if any, cracks or carvings or other such marks on the floor as are common in the Fred Meyers with cement floors.

Kroger has the absolute worst application of concrete floors in remodeled stores I've seen of any retailer. I don't know what they are doing wrong, but they are doing something wrong. Given they were one of the first chains to do this concrete floor thing, you'd think they would know what they are doing.

The one they put in the Sparks, NV Smiths last year is something. There are some aisles in the middle of the store with stains from product spills. The first time I thought they had done a poor job cleaning up spills. I realize every time I go into the store, the stains are there from these spills. For some reason when something spills on the cement floor that replaced the 1987 vintage Smiths tan floor, it just leaves a splash-like stain on the floor that does not go away. You can wipe it clean and at least make the surface clean, but the stain leaves a mark on the floor.

Raleys had a real bad looking one in Incline Village (much like the Fred Meyer ones I've seen, this Raleys dates to the late 70's), and they actually recognized it and put down some also rather ugly, but better than concrete, gray laminate or something after a couple years of ugly concrete that looked patched up and just bad. Still Raleys does concrete on new stores, but they seem to be going with this gray laminate on remodels lately.
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Re: Bad concrete floor jobs at Walmart

Post by Super S »

storewanderer wrote: April 18th, 2019, 10:38 pm When the Wal Mart near me lost its white tile floor a year or two ago, I actually was in the store one night when they were removing the floor from a big part of grocery. They had a machine and it just literally broke the floor and lifted it right up. The replacement cement floor in this store is actually smooth and looks about as good as a cement floor can look. You can still see glue marks from old tiles, but there are few, if any, cracks or carvings or other such marks on the floor as are common in the Fred Meyers with cement floors.

Kroger has the absolute worst application of concrete floors in remodeled stores I've seen of any retailer. I don't know what they are doing wrong, but they are doing something wrong. Given they were one of the first chains to do this concrete floor thing, you'd think they would know what they are doing.

The one they put in the Sparks, NV Smiths last year is something. There are some aisles in the middle of the store with stains from product spills. The first time I thought they had done a poor job cleaning up spills. I realize every time I go into the store, the stains are there from these spills. For some reason when something spills on the cement floor that replaced the 1987 vintage Smiths tan floor, it just leaves a splash-like stain on the floor that does not go away. You can wipe it clean and at least make the surface clean, but the stain leaves a mark on the floor.

Raleys had a real bad looking one in Incline Village (much like the Fred Meyer ones I've seen, this Raleys dates to the late 70's), and they actually recognized it and put down some also rather ugly, but better than concrete, gray laminate or something after a couple years of ugly concrete that looked patched up and just bad. Still Raleys does concrete on new stores, but they seem to be going with this gray laminate on remodels lately.
That's another problem with concrete. Something damages the floor, it needs to be refinished which is time consuming. With tile, you simply replace affected tiles. Which can go almost undetected if the store thinks ahead and keeps a supply of extra tiles on hand.
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Re: Bad concrete floor jobs at Walmart

Post by cjd »

Super S wrote: April 18th, 2019, 9:24 pm The concrete floors look bad period. Just look at the Fred Meyer of your choice in the Pacific Northwest for examples. Most of the remodels leave the floors looking much worse, exposing bad patch jobs, old tile marks, and areas where the floor was cut open for previous work.

As for the chemicals, wax, etc... SOMETHING is applied to the floors to give it a shiny coat, and probably needs periodic reapplication as it wears. I don't see the real benefit here. I have seen aging concrete floors which have lost their shine though.
Yeah there does seem to be something applied to the concrete. Because you can tell if they haven't been maintained.
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Re: Bad concrete floor jobs at Walmart

Post by cjd »

storewanderer wrote: April 18th, 2019, 10:38 pm When the Wal Mart near me lost its white tile floor a year or two ago, I actually was in the store one night when they were removing the floor from a big part of grocery. They had a machine and it just literally broke the floor and lifted it right up. The replacement cement floor in this store is actually smooth and looks about as good as a cement floor can look. You can still see glue marks from old tiles, but there are few, if any, cracks or carvings or other such marks on the floor as are common in the Fred Meyers with cement floors.
I saw this too at night at the Walmart here. There were a few guys behind a machine that took an aisle width at a time. I also saw them laying the new wood look flooring in the clothing departments. It looked like strips of vinyl.
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