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  • Terrazzo

    We had terrazzo floors in a house I grew up in (USA, house built in 70s). As it was flooring it was heavily smoothed and polished with zero grip. It also was prone to developing long cracks in the slabs too and they were basically irreplaceable.

    I cannot imagine a worse work surface for anything - cooking or workshop.

  • Cheers for the sharing, the concept is a bit of a nod to the type of housing you describe so thats the reasoning, I'll do some more reading about longevity!

  • Worth mentioning that they slabs we had for flooring were close about 4-5' square so I would imagine smaller slabs would be less prone to cracking, especially if you reinforced the binding medium with reinforcing fibres. It would still be very heavy and quite unforgiving a surface. Some of the comments in the wiki entry re: deterioration due to bonding agent contact with alkali or acids would give me pause for thought for kitchen use as a work surface.

    Cracking is the most common form of failure and is typically caused by
    the structural system that supports the terrazzo topping rather than
    the material itself. Contact with alkalis or acids can deteriorate the
    bonding agents used in terrazzo. As the aggregates are often marble
    dust which is calcium carbonate, strong acid can also cause
    deterioration to the aggregates.

    from here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrazzo

    More modern binders might negate that but you would need to speak to someone more knowledgeable than I.

    Worth mentioning that the cracking in our floors was more likely due to movement in the concrete slab foundation underneath, rather than anything to do with surface deterioration.

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